YUAN DYNASTY (AD 1279-1368)

A Magnificent and Rare 14th Century Fish Jar
Rosemary Scott
Senior Academic Consultant, Asian Art Departments

The quality, form and the minor decorative bands on this exceptional jar tie it closely to the fine mid-14th century jars with narrative scenes such as the van Hemert jar, sold by Christie's London in July 2005, and the former British Rail Pension Fund jar, sold by Christie's Hong Kong in November 2005. The current vessel shares with both of these narrative jars a similar boldly-painted wave band around the neck, as well as a similarly painted alternating peony band on the shoulder. In addition the petal band around the foot of the current jar relates closely to that seen on the van Hemert jar, even to the extent of the enclosed emblems alternating with flaming pearls. All the potting characteristics of the current jar also accord with those of the two narrative jars mentioned above, as does the quality of body and glaze. The cobalt used to paint the decoration on this jar is of the highest quality, and has been very successfully fired to achieve a brilliantly rich sapphire blue tone.

Large Yuan jars decorated with fish, particularly of this quality, are rare. One other jar of very similar composition to the current jar is known. This jar in the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum (Fig.1),1 has an almost identical arrangement of fish and aquatic plants, has similar wave band around its neck and peony band around its shoulders, and a petal band around its base containing similar emblems to those on the current jar. One difference is that the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum jar has an additional minor band of lattice between the main fish band and the petal panels. The mouth of the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum jar has been damaged and has been cut down and a metal band applied. Another jar with similar arrangement of fish is in the Palace Museum, Beijing (Fig. 2), which has substantial restoration.

Although the arrangement of fish and aquatic plants differs somewhat from the current jar and that in the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, the famous fish jar in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka (Fig. 3) shares a similar overall composition, including the lattice band.2 A similar arrangement of fish to those on the Osaka jar can be seen on a jar in the Umezawa Museum, although the disposition of the aquatic plants differs.3 However the Umezawa Museum jar has the same arrangement of bands - wave band around the neck, peony band around the shoulders, main fish band and petal panels - as the current jar. Like the current jar, the Umezawa Museum jar, which was sold in our London rooms on 12 October 1970, lot 23, has no lattice band between the fish and the petal panels. A further Yuan fish jar, sold in our London rooms on 8 June 1987, lot 160, has a similar disposition of decorative bands, but with an additional classic scroll band between the fish and the petal panel band.

A Yuan blue and white fish jar in the collection of the Topkapi Saray, Istanbul is decorated with a wave band around the neck, no minor band around the shoulders, fish with aquatic plants as the main decorative band, and a petal band around the base. There is no lattice band between the fish and the petal panels, and the panels contain sketchy clouds and dots, rather than emblems.4 A small number of Yuan dynasty fish jars are known which have no minor decorative bands on the body of the jar, but have the whole area painted with the fish and aquatic plant theme. Some of these jars have waves around the neck of the vessel. These include a small jar in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum,5 a jar in the Brooklyn Museum of Art from the collection of William E. Hutchins (Fig.4),6 and a jar offered by Eskenazi Ltd. in London in November 2002 (Fig. 5).7 A jar with similar composition and lack of minor bands, but with small-scale chrysanthemum scroll around the neck is in the collection of the Idemitsu Museum of Art.8

As can be seen from the panoramic view of the central decorative band on the current jar, the design of four fish swimming amongst hehua lotus (nelumbo nucifera) and other aquatic plants, including shui bie water poppy (hydrocharis dubia), qing ping three-petalled duck weed (lemna aequinoctialis), ping or tianzi cao water clover (marsilea minutaa), kucao eel grass (vallisneria) and jin yu zao hornwort (ceratophyllum); is beautifully constructed to achieve a richly-textured, perfectly balanced composition, full of movement, depicting the fish swimming convincingly through the water. Zhejiang province, where the Southern Song Hangzhou Academy was located during the 12th and 13th centuries, was one of the areas known for paintings on paper or silk depicting fish amongst aquatic plants. The theme was continued by artists in local schools within this province during the Yuan dynasty, and the fact that Zhejiang province abuts Jiangxi province, where the Jingdezhen kilns were located, may be significant in explaining the exceptional painterly skill demonstrated by the ceramic artist who painted the fish and plants on the current porcelain jar and some others in this group.

In fact paintings of fish were esteemed at the Chinese court as early as the Northern Song period. Several members of the Song imperial clan were known to paint fish in their spare time, and an album leaf entitled Fish at Play by Zhao Kexiong (born c. 1080) is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zhao was a military official and the great grandson of the Emperor Taizong's younger brother.9 The great patron of the arts, Emperor Huizong (AD 1101-1125) commanded the production of catalogues of various sections of the imperial collection. One of these catalogues, the Xuanhe huapu, published in AD 1120 was compiled under the personal supervision of the Emperor. The Xuanhe huapu records paintings in the imperial collection, and divides the paintings into ten subject categories in twenty chapters, listing a total of 6,396 scrolls and giving the names of 231 painters, whose work dates from the 3rd to the early 12th century. According to the xumu or preface to the table of contents, the ten subject categories were placed in order according to the importance attached to each category. While religious subjects, human figures and architectural subjects are placed at the top of the list, it is interesting to note that the category of paintings taking dragons and fish as their themes is ranked ahead of those concerned with landscape, animals or birds and flowers.

One of the Northern Song dynasty artists who painted fish, and whose work was greatly admired at court, was Liu Cai (active c. 1080-1120). Indeed some 30 scrolls attributed to Liu Cai are recorded in the 1120 catalogue of the imperial painting collection. Liu was one of the Song artists to introduce new realism in the depiction of the natural world, and his fish paintings, like the famous Fish Swimming amid Falling Flowers in the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum dated circa 1075,10 depicted fish completely at home in their environment, darting about in the water amongst aquatic plants. A similar approach to fish painting can be seen in a hanging scroll previously attributed to the 13th century painter Fan Anren but now ascribed to circa 1400. This scroll entitled Yu zao tu, is in the Cleveland Museum of Art.11 The liveliness of the fish as well as the choice of aquatic plants in Liu Cai's painting provided inspiration for later artists working in both two- and three-dimensional media. Even the swimming positions of the individual fish recur either in precisely the same form or in mirror image on later paintings and on porcelain jars.

In its ground-breaking exhibition Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), the Cleveland Museum of Art exhibited a painting of Fish and Water-Grass attributed to the Yuan dynasty artist Laian.12 This painting, from the Nelson-Atkins Gallery, is described in the exhibition catalogue as 'probably the best example of the fish paintings attributed to Lai-an - an immediate descendant from the tradition of Lui Ts'ai [Liu Cai] and Fan An-jen [Fan Anren].' This painting not only shares with the decoration on the current porcelain jar a similar choice of aquatic plants, but also the feeling of naturalistic movement in its depiction of the swimming fish.13 It is noticeable that on a number of surviving Yuan dynasty fish paintings the scale of the fish in relation to the overall size of the scroll painting is considerably increased compared to that associated with Song dynasty works. Each Yuan fish is shown in great detail, and, as Wu Tung has pointed out,14 the fish frequently appear to have been given their own personalities. This feature of Yuan fish painting can be seen particularly clearly in the painting Fish among Water Plants attributed to Laian, and the anonymous Two Carp Leaping among Waves in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.15 The bai or predatory carp shown in the former painting provides a particularly good (mirror image) comparison with its counterpart on the current blue and white jar.

Indeed a number of the Yuan dynasty paintings of fish provide good comparisons with the fish shown on the Yuan blue and white fish jars. It seems that certain changes in the depiction of creatures in nature that took place between the Song and the Yuan dynasties may have made the Yuan paintings more attractive as models for the ceramic artists. When comparing paintings of similar natural subjects by Cui Bo painted in AD 1061 and Meng Yujian in the early 14th century, James Cahill notes 'how much of the incomparable naturalism of Sung painting, and its perception of nature in terms of organic interaction of forces and phenomena, has here been sacrificed to essentially decorative aims.'16 While Cahill may not have intended this comment to compliment the Yuan artist, such an approach would undoubtedly have made these Yuan paintings more attractive as models for the ceramic decorator.

Fish appeared as decoration on Chinese ceramics as early as the Neolithic period. The 4th millennium BC painted earthenwares from the Yangshao Neolithic culture at Banpo in Shaanxi province included motifs linked to food and to worship. The people of the Yangshao culture were some of China's first farmers and the grain, animals and fish that provided their staple diet were depicted on their ceramics.17 One of the most famous dishes from this site, bears not only depictions of fish, but also stylised faces surmounted by fish, which may have been ritual shamanistic masks attesting to the importance of fish to that society.18

Fish have, of course, remained a popular theme in Chinese ceramics - providing both shape and decoration. Naturalistic fish appear cold-painted on a 1st century dish from the Eastern Han period preserved in the Yamato Bunkakan Museum, Nara.19 A pair of incised and pecked fish decorate the interior base of an early Yue ware basin dating to the Jin dynasty, 3rd or early 4th century, in the collection of the Percival David Foundation.20 Vessels made in the form of fish, especially two confronted fish, were popular among both high- and low-fired wares during the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907).21 Fish also provided decoration on the ceramics of this period, as can be seen on the famous blue-decorated earthenware jar in the Museum of Decorative Art, Copenhagen.22 The Song dynasty (AD 960-1279) saw an even greater use of fish for decoration on ceramics. Amongst the most popular were the fish carved and incised under the glaze of the classic Northern Song Ding wares, such as that carved in the interior of the large basin in the Percival David Foundation,23 and moulded on Northern Song or Jin dynasty Ding wares such as the dish with paired fish and lotus in the Idemitsu Art Museum, Tokyo.24 Fish also appear on popular wares such as the 12th century Cizhou wares with sgraffiato decoration, as seen on the famous pillow with catfish and eel grass in the Yamato Bunkakan Museum, Nara.25 They can also be seen on Southern Song celadon-glazed wares from the Longquan kilns, usually in the form of a pair of sprig moulded fish applied in relief under the glaze, as on a dish in the Percival David Foundation.26

While the inclusion of fish on the Banpo earthenwares is clearly linked, at least in part, to their importance in the diet of the inhabitants of Banpo, the continued popularity of fish as a decorative theme is due to a combination of artistic, philosophical and lexical reasons. Fish have come to represent a number of desirable attributes in China. Some of the sources for this can be found in philosophical Daoism, particularly in the Zhuangzi, attributed to Zhuangzi, or 'Master Zhuang' ( 369-298 BC), who, after Laozi, was one of the earliest philosophers of what has become known as Daojia, or the School of the Way.27 Among other things, Zhuangzi consistently uses fish to exemplifying creatures who achieve happiness by being in tune with their environment. As part of a much more complex discussion in chapter 17, Zhuangzi, who is crossing a bridge over the Hao river with Huizi, notes: 'See how the small fish are darting about [in the water]. That is the happiness of fish.' There are several paintings dated to the late Song and early Yuan dynasties, which are entitled The Pleasure of Fish, which is a direct reference to this quotation. One such handscroll, dated to the 12th century and attributed to Liu Cai, is in the St. Louis Art Museum,28 another dated AD 1291 by Zhou Dongqing is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.29 The inscription on this latter painting has been translated by Wen C. Fong as reading: 'Not being fish, how do we know their happiness? We can only take an ideal and make it into a painting. To probe the subtleties of the ordinary, we must describe the indescribable.' Fong notes that 'Living under alien rule, Sung loyalists felt like fish out of water. The pleasures taken by fish in water thus held for them an "indescribable" feeling.'30 For the Chinese literati living under Mongol rule, many deprived of the opportunity to serve as officials in the normal way, the image of fish in water was a particularly poignant one.

In Dazongshi chapter six Zhuangzi recounts Confucius' comments to illustrate Daoist attitudes. Confucius said: 'Fish are born in water. Man is born in the Dao. If fish, born in water, seek the deep shadows of the pond or pool then they have everything they need. If man, born in the Dao sinks deep into the shadows of non-action, forgetting aggression and worldly concern, then he has everything he needs and his life is secure. The moral of this is that all fish need is to lose themselves in water, while all man needs is to lose himself in the Dao.' The ideal of fish losing themselves in water was perfectly expressed pictorially by the Northern Song artist Liu Cai in his handscroll Fish Swimming amid Falling Flowers, discussed above.

It is not surprising that the depiction of fish in water has come to provide a rebus for yushui hexie 'may you be as harmonious as fish and water'. Such symbolism is particularly appropriate in the context of marriage, and decoration including two fish additionally symbolizes both fertility and conjugal happiness in the same context. Much of the popularity of fish as a decorative theme, especially in later dynasties, hinges on the fact that the word for fish (yu) is a homophone for the word for abundance or surplus (yu) - thus two fish represent doubled abundance and a gold fish (jinyu) an abundance of gold.

The Chinese names for individual fish also provide auspicious rebuses, and it is significant that from the Yuan dynasty onwards a greater variety of fish appear on ceramics, and the characteristics of the particular types are depicted much more clearly. The word for carp, for example, is li which sounds like the word for profit li, and thus two carp would represent doubled profit. The pronunciation of the word for carp li also suggests the Confucian li of moral uprightness. The carp has an additional meaning, for it represents the scholar who is successful in his civil service examinations to become a jinshi, and will gain a good official position. Legend tells of the carp swimming upstream every Spring to the Dragon Gate on the Yellow River. If it succeeds in leaping over the gate, it is transformed into a dragon. Hence we often see a scholar standing on the back of a fish which is in the process of turning into a dragon. The Chinese name for catfish is nian, which, in turn, sounds like the word for year nian, thus two catfish combined with any other auspicious symbol provides a rebus wishing that the blessing should be bestowed 'year after year'.

The fish on the current jar provide a much more complex rebus, since they appear to be qing black carp (mylopharyngodon piceus); (hongqi) bai predatory carp or redfin culter (culter erythropterus); lian silver carp (hypopthalmichthys molitrix); and gui or jue Chinese perch or mandarin fish (siniperca chuatsi). The names of these fish combine to provide rebuses which suggest either qing bai lian gui 'of good descent, modest and honourable' or qingbai lianjie 'of honourable descent and incorruptible'. The concentration on types of carp in this composition is not accidental. Hou-mei Sung of the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, has established through the examination of contemporary paintings and literature that by the 12th century the carp was already the most prominent fish in the Chinese arts, primarily because of its legendary ability to transform into a dragon.31

Not only the identical choice of fish but also the graceful arrangement of water weed and lotus on jars such as the current example reappear on beautifully painted imperial Xuande (1424-35) marked blue and white dishes of the type preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing (Fig. 6) 32 and in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan.33 This reinforces the importance of these high quality blue and white Yuan jars produced in the mid-14th century. It has already been noted in connection with the narrative Yuan jar, formerly in the British Rail Pension Fund, that was sold by Christie's Hong Kong in November 2005, that unique aspects of its architectural depiction were copied on fine imperial Xuande blue and white porcelains.34

This further transference of a specific style and motif from another of these magnificent Yuan jars to porcelain produced at the imperial kilns in one of the most esteemed early Ming reigns, confirms the importance of this current jar in the history of Chinese porcelain production. In the case of fish and aquatic plants, the specific combination of fish seen on the current Yuan dynasty jar was not only copied in the Xuande reign, but also in the 16th century. It is probably no coincidence that a painter like Liu Jie (active c. AD 1485-1525), who served as a court artist in the early years of the Jiajing reign should have painted fish following the approach of Yuan dynasty artists.35 Records of porcelains to be commissioned from the imperial kilns for the Jiajing emperor (1522-55) note that in the 21st year of his reign he ordered 200 blue and white guan jars decorated with qing, bai, li, and gui - almost the same fish that appear on the current Yuan dynasty guan jar. While such an order was in keeping with the Jiajing emperor's deep commitment to Daoism, and may also suggest the influence of painters like Liu Jie, it may additionally suggest that the Yuan dynasty jars were known at the Jiajing court, and indeed may have been handed down by succeeding Ming emperors.


Fig. 1 Jar from the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum
Fig. 2 Jar from the Palace Museum, Beijing
Fig. 3 Jar from Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka
Fig. 4 Jar from the Brooklyn Museum of Art36
Fig. 5 Jar sold by Eskenazi Ltd., London
Fig. 6 Xuande dish from the Palace Museum, Beijing


1 Illustrated by Zhu Yuping in Yuan dai qing hua ci, Wenhui chubanshe, Shanghai, 2000, p. 12, no. 1-5.
2 See Masterpieces of Oriental Ceramics, Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, 1994, p. 54, no. 29.
3 Illustrated by Zhu Yuping in Yuan dai qing hua ci, op.cit., p. 83, no. 3-36.
4 Illustrated ibid., p. 219, no. 8-44.
5 Illustrated ibid., p. 82, no. 3-31.
6 Illustrated by Margaret Medley in The Chinese Potter, Phaidon, Oxford, 1976, p. 184, fig. 135.
7 Eskenazi, Two rare Chinese porcelain fish jars of the 14th and 16th centuries, 7 November-30 November 2002.
8 See Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1987, no. 616.
9 See Maggie Bickford, 'The Painting of Flowers and Birds in Sung-Yuan China', M.K. Hearn & J.G. Smith (eds.), Arts of the Sung and Yuan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, pp. 296-7 and fig. 15.4.
10 Illustrated in Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, Yang Xin, et al., Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1997, p. 118, pl. 110.
11 See Wai-kam Ho, et al., Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: the Collection of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1980, pp. 150-151, no. 128.
12 Sherman E. Lee and Wai-Kam Ho, Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yüan Dynasty (1279-1368), Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968, no. 213.
13 The painting has in fact been at times attributed to the Yuan 14th century artist priest Laian, and at others to the Southern Song academy painter Fan Anren, who was active around the middle of the 13th century. Other scholars suggest that it should be assigned to an unknown 13th century artist. See Wai-kam Ho, et al., Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: the Collection of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, op. cit., pp. 94-5, no. 75.
14 Wu Tung, Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1,000 Years of Chinese Painting, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1997, p. 217.
15 Illustrated ibid. p. 217, no. 120, and pp. 216-7, no. 119, respectively.
16 James Cahill, Hills Beyond a River - Chinese Painting of the Yüan Dynasty 1279-1368, Weatherhill, New York and Tokyo, 1976, pp. 156-7.
17 Chang, Kwang-chih, The Archaeology of Ancient China, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1972, pp. 92-3, fig. 27.
18 Ibid., p. 104, fig. 33.
19 Illustrated in Special Exhibition - Jixiang -Auspicious Motifs in Chinese Art, Tokyo National Museum, 1998, p. 66, no. 42.
20 Illustrated by Rosemary Scott in Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art - A Guide to the Collection, Percival David Foundation, London, 1989, p. 33, no. 13.
21 These vessels are discussed by Rosemary Scott in Imperial Taste: Chinese Ceramics from the Percival David Foundation, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1989, pp. 18-19.
22 Illustrated by M. Sato and G. Hasebe in Sekai Toji Zenshu - 11- Sui Tang, Shogakukan, Tokyo, 1976, p. 71, no. 51.
23 M. Medley, Illustrated Catalogue of Ting and Allied Wares, Percival David Foundation, London, 1980, plate IV, no. 22.
24 Illustrated in Special Exhibition - Jixiang -Auspicious Motifs in Chinese Art, op. cit, p. 67, no. 43.
25 Illustrated by G. Hasebe in Sekai Toji Zenshu - 12 - Song, Shogakukan, Tokyo, 1977, p. 242, no. 239.
26 Illustrated by Rosemary Scott in Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art - A Guide to the Collection, op. cit., p. 58, pl. 45.
27 This work was also influential in the reception, interpretation, and transformation of Buddhism in China. The currently extant text, which we know as the Zhuangzi was produced through editing and organisation by Guo Xiang (Kuo Hsiang, d. AD 312) a Jin dynasty thinker and commentator. He reduced an original work in fifty-two chapters to the current thirty-three chapters by removing material that he regarded as spurious
28 Illustrated by Richard Edwards in The World Around the Chinese Artist: Aspects of Realism in Chinese Painting, University of Michigan, Ann Arbour, 1987, p. 18, fig. 1-7.
29 Illustrated by Stephen Little in Taoism and the Arts of China, Art Institute of Chicago, 2000, no. 7.
30 Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th-14th Century, New York, 1992, pp.380-1.
31 Hou-mei Sung, 'Chinese fish Painting and its Symbolic Meanings: Sung and Yüan Fish Paintings', National Palace Museum Bulletin, vol. XXX, Nos. 1 and 2, March-April 1995, p. 10.
32 See The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum - 34 - Blue and White Porcelain with Underglaze Red (1), Commercial Press, Hong Kong, 2000, p. 144, no. 136.
33 See Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsüan-te Imperial Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1998, pp. 414-5, no. 180.
34 See Rosemary Scott, 'The Jinxiang Ting Jar', Important Chinese Ceramics, Christie's, Hong Kong, 28 November 2005, p. 153.
35 See Wai-kam Ho, et al., Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: the collection of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, op. cit., pp. 150-151, no. 129, for a hanging scroll entitled Yu zao tu (Swimming Carp) by Liu Jie bearing the artists signature and seal.
36 This jar is reproduced courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA/William E. Hutchins Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.