A PAIR OF TRANSITIONAL BLUE AND WHITE 'WATER MARGIN SUBJECT' VASES

CIRCA 1640

細節

A PAIR OF TRANSITIONAL BLUE AND WHITE 'WATER MARGIN SUBJECT' VASES
circa 1640
Finely painted in brilliant blue with a continuous landscape of fern-grown rocks and mountains among swirling clouds, each vase with four distinctive characters from the famous semi-historical novel, brandishing swords and fighting-sticks, each one named in Chinese, all between two narrow bands of incised decoration and below a collar of stylised palmette leaves at the waisted neck
approx. 17¾in. (45cm.) high (2)

拍品專文

The characters depicted are from the Ming dynasty novel Shuihu Zhuan, "Water Margin". It is the story of the bandit leader Song Jiang, a historical personality at the end of the Song Dynasty, and his fictitious 108 companions, who in the novel have all turned to banditry because of oppression by corrupt officials. In this novel the bandits are noble and upright men who fight for justice in a narrative that has been compared with the Robin Hood tale in English tradition or Friedrich von Schiller's play Die Räuber in its description of the individual life stories and the fates of a group of outcasts that become the fictional heroes.
The names of the characters depicted are Jiu wen long, Shijin the nine-striped dragon; Jin qiang shou, Qulin the gold gunhand [qiang may be translated as a Kochako]; Hong tan lei, Lingzhen the thundermaker; Xingze, Wusong the tiger-wrestler; the other vase with Cai yuan zi, Zhang qing the farmer; Mei lan gong, Zhutong with the beautiful beard; Mo yun jin ci, Oupeng who can jump as high as heaven; Huo yan luo, Ruan Xiaoqi the living devil.