Bonhams 1793 : A magnificent and large blue and white 'boys' jar, guan Jiajing six-character mark and of the period

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10 Nov 2011 10 a.m. London, New Bond Street
Fine Chinese Art
Auction 18981

106

A magnificent and large blue and white 'boys' jar, guan

Jiajing six-character mark and of the period
Superbly painted in vivid underglaze-blue of violet tone around the baluster body, with a continuous scene of sixteen boys engaged in various leisurely pursuits including a boy impersonating a school master seated before a screen painting with a boy seated at a table before him reading a book, another crawling towards a book and a third boy holding a staff, flanked on one side by a boy pulling at a toy, another boy holding a large lotus leaf above the head of his companion riding a hobby-horse and another boy holding a cane, and on the other side a boy raising his hands, in the further distance a boy riding in a cart towed by another and with a companion holding a fan and another holding a potted plant, with three further boys gathered around a table looking intensely at probably fighting crickets, all in a fenced terraced garden amidst plantain, pine trees and grass, between the shoulders with cartouches enclosing fruit and floral sprays reserved on a wan diaper ground, and a border of overlapping lotus-petal panels above the foot.
38.8cm (15 1/4in) wide, 33.5cm (13 3/16in) high

Estimate:

£300,000 - 500,000
CNY 3.0 million - 4.9 million
HK$ 3.6 million - 6.0 million

Footnotes

Provenance: Christie's London, 8 June 1987, lot 151
An English private collection

This magnificent and important 'boys at play' jar was inspired by earlier Ming Dynasty blue and white ceramics painted with 'boys at play': for a Xuande mark and period example painted with sixteen boys at play, see a bowl illustrated by Liao Pao Show in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsün-te Imperial Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, Catalogue, no.152. This legacy and popularity of theme continued onto the Chenghua period; for a Chenghua mark and period example, see a bowl illustrated in A Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from Zushan, Jingdezhen, Hong Kong, 1993, pl.C73.

The auspicious design of boys represents the theme of welcoming sons, zhaozhi. The design also relates to the 'hundred boys' decoration, symbolising the sons of the founder of the Zhou Dynasty, Zhou Wenwang, who was blessed with ninety-nine sons from his twenty-four wives and adopted an orphaned boy to accomplish the even one-hundred. Perhaps more than the former two symbols, boys at play represent the blessing for abundance of male descendants ensuring the continuation of the family line and performance of filial duties, a wish which would have been further amplified for the continuation of the Ming Dynasty.

This jar is extremely rare, although other extant examples can be found in important museums and private collections. Compare a jar illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (II), Hong Kong, 2000, Catalogue, no.101 (with a cover); for another from the British Museum and previously from the Mrs Alfred Clark Collection, see J.Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, Catalogue, no.9:50 (with a cover); for another covered jar see also Chinese Porcelain - The S.C.Ko Tianminlou Collection (II), Hong Kong, Catalogue no.35. Another covered jar from the Capital Museum, Beijing, was excavated in 1980 from the Zhaoyang district, Beijing, Wenwu, 1982:9, pl.8:2. Similar examples without covers from important collections are illustrated in Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, Catalogue, no.191, and in the Museum of Decorative Art, Copenhagen, illustrated by D.Lion-Goldschmidt in Ming Porcelain, London, 1978, pl.124.

It appears that very few jars of this particular decoration have been offered at auction. Most recently, a similar jar without a cover, was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 27 May 2009, lot 1809; and another with a cover, from the J.M.Hu and Jingguantang Collections, was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 27 November 2007, lot 1738.