Page 52 - Christie's Important Chinese Art, March 23 to 24 2023 New York

(detail)
VARIOUS PROPERTIES
1053
A VERY RARE AND SUPERBLY DECORATED BLUE AND WHITE inscribed in the emperor's handwriting onto stelae and had pavilions built to
`WEST LAKE' VASE, GUANYIN ZUN house each inscribed stone.
KANGXI PERIOD (1662-1722)
With its masterful painting and dynamic design, the present vase certainly
16¿ in. (41 cm.) high ranks amongst the finest examples of porcelains featuring the theme of the
‘Ten views of West Lake’. The vivid scenes, depicted in fine pencil drawing
$70,000-90,000 with remarkable attention to minute detail, provide a valuable insight into
how the West Lake looked in the 17 century.
th
PROVENANCE:
Eugene O. Perkins (1926-2002) Collection, Utah.
The theme of the ‘Ten views of West Lake’ can be found on a famous
The Eugene O. Perkins Collection of Qing Porcelain; Christie's New York, 2
Kangxi-period blue-and-white pear-shaped vase in the Shanghai Museum,
June 1989, lot 17.
illustrated by Sir Michael Butler and Wang Qingzheng, Seventeenth Century
Jingdezhen Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum and the Butler Collections,
West Lake, located near the city of Hangzhou, in modern-day Zhejiang Hong Kong/London, 2006, pp. 284-85 , no. 104. The Shanghai vase depicts
province, has been famous for its natural beauty since the Tang dynasty eight views, some of which are identified by name plaques, and is decorated
(AD 618-907), and immortalized by eminent poets and painters since the in the more typical Kangxi manner with stylized renditions of the pictorial
Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279). Travelers to the area were encouraged to elements and broad washes of underglaze blue to define the ground, trees,
walk around the lake and surrounding district, and admire the various views rocks and mountains.
of temples, caves and waterfalls. The Southern Song biographer Zhu Mu (d.
ca. 1246) in his Fangyu shenglan (Topographical Guide to Touring Sites of A Kangxi-period five-piece blue-and-white garniture decorated with scenes
Scenic Beauty), identified ten select vistas of the lake:
likely depicting West Lake and painted in a similar style to the Shanghai
vase is illustrated by M. A. Pinto de Matos in The RA Collection of Chinese
Autumnal Moon Reflected in a Calm Lake (pinghu qiuyue) Ceramics, vol. I, London, 2011, pp. 288-92, where it is noted another similarly
Spring Dawn Breaking Over Su Embankment (sudi chunxiao) decorated garniture is in the Zwinger Museum, Dresden, and a similarly
Lingering Snow upon Break-Off Bridge (duanqiao canxue) decorated vase is in the Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm.
Glow of Sunset upon Thunder Peak (leifeng xizhao)
Evening Bell-toll at South Screen Mountain (nanping wanzhong) The fine painting on the current vase can be compared to a vase dated ca.
Breeze Amongst the Lotuses of Brewing Courtyard (quyuan fenghe) late 1680s of similar shape, decorated with poems set amid a mountainous
Viewing Fish at Flower Harbour (huagang guanyu) landscape, illustrated by J. B. Curtis in Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth
Listening to Orioles Amidst Billowing Willows (liulang wen ying) Century, New York, 1995, pp. 82-83, no. 25.
Moon Reflected on Three Ponds (santan yinyue)
Twin Peaks Piercing Clouds (liangfeng chayun).
清康熙ǎ青花西湖十景圖觀音尊
The Qing emperor Kangxi (r. 1662-1722) visited Hangzhou five times, and
had a house built on a small island called Solitary Hill in the middle of the Ϝ源
western end of West Lake. In the year 1700, the emperor inscribed the &VHFOF 0 1FSLJOT
珍藏
Ỏ他州
names of the ten vistas identified by Zhu Mu, which the local authorities 5IF &VHFOF 0 1FSLJOT $PMMFDUJPO PG 2JOH 1PSDFMBJO 紐☼ωૈ得
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