It is highly unusual to find this popular 'boys' theme rendered in the wucai palette. Although there are no published polychrome examples of this exact pattern, the theme is more familiar in underglaze-blue, such as the octagonal box and cover, sold in these Rooms, 29 April 2002, lot 611; and a dish with boys seated around tables in the Percival David Foundation, included in the exhibition Ceramic Evolution in the Middle Ming Period, 1994, and illustrated in the Catalogue, p. 31, no. 55.

Compare with a related wucai rectangular box and cover depicting a scholar and young attendants in a garden landscape scene, in the Tokyo National Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, Kodansha series, 1982, vol. 1, no. 126. This same scene also appears on an underglaze-blue rectangular box and cover in the Percival David Foundation, op. cit., 1994, no. 56.