KANGXI SIX-CHARACTER MARK IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE WITHIN A DOUBLE CIRCLE AND OF THE PERIOD (1662-1722)

The three figures in the present dish can be identified by the signs hanging from their belts as characters from the famous novel ‘The Water Margin’: Sun Chao stands in the center, flanked by Ruan Xiaowu and Lei Heng. The scene was likely inspired by illustrations of ‘The Water Margin’ made by the artist Chen Hongshou, who created the illustrations for an edition of the book which was published in 1657, as well as a set of album leaves showing a different character on each page. A dish in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, decorated sparsely with just three figures stripped of any landscape setting, appears to be particularly related to the Chen Hongshou album leaves: see R. Kerr, Chinese Ceramics: Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644-1911, London, 1986, p. 102-103, no. 81.

A similar Kangxi-marked famille verte dish decorated with three figures and covered on the exterior with a green glaze in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is illustrated by S. Valenstein, A Handbook of Chinese Ceramics, New York, 1975, p. 232, no. 226, where the author notes (p. 236) that “the green glaze on the reverse of this dish is somewhat unusual”. Two further examples also with green glaze on the reverse were bequeathed by the Rev. A. V. Valentine-Richards to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, museum nos. C.38-1933 and C.39-1933, and another related dish is illustrated by Wang Qingzheng, Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, p. 305, no. 132.