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Lot Essay
The painter of this unusual jar has a fresh take on the dragon striding through clouds: he has overlaid the clouds on the body of the dragon to emphasize that the beast is clawing its way through the atmosphere. The standard treatment is to frame the dragon with clouds in a formal tableau. Here, the smaller wisps of clouds seem to travel more like animated eels than streams of air.
In Korean mythology, the dragon is a benevolent creature that controls the rain and clouds needed for successful crops. The three-claw dragon was employed as a decorative device when potters began to paint with iron-brown underglaze in the late fifteenth century. A fourth claw, as on this jar, was added to show the dragon grasping a flaming pearl, derived from the Buddhist cintamani, or "wish-granting jewel."
The painting on the jar is executed in an oxide of cobalt that is ground and diluted to a grainy syrup. The pigment is poured into the tubular handle of the brush, which is squeezed at the base to release the paint onto the animal-hair tip. While the light touch of the imagery on this jar suggests brush painting, the process of decorating with the cobalt slurry is less fluid, revealing the dextrous as well as the imaginative approach of the painter here.
In Korean mythology, the dragon is a benevolent creature that controls the rain and clouds needed for successful crops. The three-claw dragon was employed as a decorative device when potters began to paint with iron-brown underglaze in the late fifteenth century. A fourth claw, as on this jar, was added to show the dragon grasping a flaming pearl, derived from the Buddhist cintamani, or "wish-granting jewel."
The painting on the jar is executed in an oxide of cobalt that is ground and diluted to a grainy syrup. The pigment is poured into the tubular handle of the brush, which is squeezed at the base to release the paint onto the animal-hair tip. While the light touch of the imagery on this jar suggests brush painting, the process of decorating with the cobalt slurry is less fluid, revealing the dextrous as well as the imaginative approach of the painter here.