Page 241 - Christies Japanese and Korean Art Sept 22 2020 NYC

Published already in 1939, this eighteenth-century, blue-and- jar; it further reveals that in the transformation from bottle to
white porcelain jar is exceptionally important as it features a figural jar, such vessels saw both an increase in size and a change in
scene well-known from Chinese and Korean paintings but seldom proportions, the shoulder becoming ever broader, presumably to
represented on ceramics: three worthies seated in a landscape and accommodate the jar’s wider mouth. As evinced by a porcelain
playing weiqi, a board game similar to chess called weiqi in Chinese jar embellished with a branch of fruiting grapevine painted in
and wigi, or baduk, in Korean but better known in the West by underglaze iron brown, the jar now in the collection of Ewha
the Japanese name go. Although the bamboo and blossoming-plum Womans University Museum, Seoul, early eighteenth-century
branches depicted on eighteenth-century Korean blue-and-white potters gave the jar form the robust interpretation that would
jars frequently correspond closely to related themes painted on continue through the end of the dynastic era. Unique to Korea, jars
paper and silk, the figural decoration on such jars seldom finds such with bulging shoulders and gently curved side walls that descend
close counterparts in contemporaneous paintings, making this an to a constricted base were ubiquitous during the seventeenth,
extraordinarily rare and very important example. eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
Used as storage vessels and occasionally as vases for monumental Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century examples have a short,
floral displays at banquets and ceremonies, such large, broad- vertical neck and an exaggerated profile, with massive shoulders
shouldered, narrow-waisted jars were popular in Korea from and constricted waist, the profile incorporating a distinct S-curve.
the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Some feature By contrast, jars from the nineteenth century—particularly those
landscape decoration, while others sport floral designs, and yet from later in that century—exhibit a more mannered profile with
others boast dragons, tigers, haetae v, or other auspicious beasts. narrower shoulders, an attenuated body, a beveled foot, and a tall,
The rarest and most desirable, however, feature majestic striding cylindrical neck.
dragons or figural decoration with Daoist overtones.
Those rare, eighteenth-century jars with figural decoration typically
Formally termed jun in Korean, such jars are often also called ho, present an elderly scholar, often shown as a Daoist hermit, in a
just as they occasionally are characterized as gwan, all three terms landscape seated on a rock under a pine tree, as revealed by a well-
referring to types of jars; those with dragon décor are known as known jar in the collection of the National Museum of Korea,
yongjun (literally, dragon jars). This jar shape is sometimes also Seoul (museum number nam 479) . Other such jars occasionally
referred to as a “moon jar”—dal hangari in Korean—though that depict the scholar lying on a flat-topped rock under a paulownia
name technically should be reserved for large round jars whose tree, as witnessed by another famous jar in the National Museum
globular shape recalls a full moon. of Korea (ssu 32870). By contrast, the front face of this magnificent
jar features three elderly worthies seated at a flat-topped rock under
The jar’s form doubtless finds distant inspiration in meiping vessels a pine and playing weiqi, a traditional Chinese board game that
created in China during the Northern Song period (960–1127). might be compared to chess. A fourth figure—an older male with
Despite the poetic name meaning “plum vase”, meiping (Korean, a worker’s broad hat—stands to the (viewer’s) right of the seated
maebyeong) vessels were not vases for the display of cut branches gentlemen, immediately behind the pine trunk; holding a broom
of blossoming plum but were elegant storage bottles for wine and and small dustpan, he sweeps the away the accumulated leaves.
other liquids. Korean potters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Moving around the jar, a crane gracefully descends to the left of
during the Goryeo dynasty (918– 1392), gave the maebyeong form the three seated gentlemen, leading the viewer’s eye to the jar’s rear
its classic interpretation, with broad shoulders, narrow waist, and face, which features a landscape with a foreground lake backed by
lightly flaring foot. In fact, the graceful Goryeo interpretation of towering mountains. Described by a circle and framed above and
the maebyeong echoes in meiping vessels created in China from the below by wispy clouds, a full moon appears over the center of the
fifteenth century onward, during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing mountain range. A flock of birds in flight, more wispy clouds, and
(1644–1911) dynasties. the calligraphically painted leaves of an orchid plant combine to
lead the viewer’s eye back around to the figures seated on the jar’s
Crafted in both porcelain and buncheong stoneware, the
front face.
maebyeong form persisted into Korea’s Joseon dynasty (1392–1910),
following its own evolutionary path. Dated by inscription to 1489, Japanese sources often title this theme “Three Stars Playing
a monumental blue-and-white porcelain jar with pine and bamboo Chess”—i.e., the theme of three elderly men playing weiqi under
décor in the collection of Dongguk University Museum, Seoul a pine tree, occasionally with a fourth gentleman resting against a
reveals that by the late fifteenth-century the maebyeong vessel had rock a short distance away. In the context of Chinese and Korean
been transformed from slender-necked bottle into wide-mouthed painting, the Japanese nomenclature is ambiguous, however, as