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Lot Essay
The bowl is of deep, rounded form, finely painted in soft tones of underglaze cobalt blue with a continuous scene of twenty boys at play in a balustraded garden, set beneath scrolling clouds and undulating mountains. A double line encircles the rim, while a key-fret band borders the foot.
With its finely potted form and lively decoration, this joyful bowl is characteristic of the refined porcelains of the Chenghua period. In Chinese art, the depiction of children is an auspicious motif conveying wishes for abundant offspring and enduring family prosperity.
The theme of boys at play appears to have been rarely used on Yuan and Hongwu porcelains, but emerged on rare bowls of the Yongle reign. One such example, of broader and shallower profile and painted with sixteen boys at play in a garden, is in the Tianminlou Collection; see Chinese Porcelain in the S. C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, no. 15. The subject continued into the Xuande reign, while Chenghua examples typically adopt a deeper form with a narrower mouth, as on the present bowl. The Chenghua Emperor, who ascended the throne at a young age, is thought to have particularly favoured motifs expressing auspicious wishes for progeny.
Related Chenghua bowls are preserved in several important museum collections, although examples painted with twenty boys are comparatively rarer. Compare an example decorated with twenty boys from the Percival David Foundation, now in the British Museum, see museum number: PDF,B.628; another, painted with sixteen boys, also in the British Museum and illustrated by Jessica Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, no. 6:2; a smaller example decorated with fourteen boys in the Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ch’eng-hua Porcelain Ware, Taipei, 2003, no. 20 (fig. 1); an example in the Victoria and Albert Museum (accession no. FE.35-1972); and one from the W. W. Winkworth Collection, illustrated in Ming Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. 62B.
Compare also a Chenghua ‘boys’ bowl painted with sixteen boys from the F.A. Riesco Collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 27 November 2013, lot 3113 (fig. 2); and one from the Meiyintang Collection, sold at Poly Hong Kong, 24 June 2019, lot 3406.
With its finely potted form and lively decoration, this joyful bowl is characteristic of the refined porcelains of the Chenghua period. In Chinese art, the depiction of children is an auspicious motif conveying wishes for abundant offspring and enduring family prosperity.
The theme of boys at play appears to have been rarely used on Yuan and Hongwu porcelains, but emerged on rare bowls of the Yongle reign. One such example, of broader and shallower profile and painted with sixteen boys at play in a garden, is in the Tianminlou Collection; see Chinese Porcelain in the S. C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, no. 15. The subject continued into the Xuande reign, while Chenghua examples typically adopt a deeper form with a narrower mouth, as on the present bowl. The Chenghua Emperor, who ascended the throne at a young age, is thought to have particularly favoured motifs expressing auspicious wishes for progeny.
Related Chenghua bowls are preserved in several important museum collections, although examples painted with twenty boys are comparatively rarer. Compare an example decorated with twenty boys from the Percival David Foundation, now in the British Museum, see museum number: PDF,B.628; another, painted with sixteen boys, also in the British Museum and illustrated by Jessica Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, no. 6:2; a smaller example decorated with fourteen boys in the Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Ch’eng-hua Porcelain Ware, Taipei, 2003, no. 20 (fig. 1); an example in the Victoria and Albert Museum (accession no. FE.35-1972); and one from the W. W. Winkworth Collection, illustrated in Ming Pottery and Porcelain, London, 1951, pl. 62B.
Compare also a Chenghua ‘boys’ bowl painted with sixteen boys from the F.A. Riesco Collection, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 27 November 2013, lot 3113 (fig. 2); and one from the Meiyintang Collection, sold at Poly Hong Kong, 24 June 2019, lot 3406.