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Lot Essay
West Lake, located near the city of Hangzhou, in modern-day Zhejiang province, has been famous for its natural beauty since the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907), and immortalized by eminent poets and painters since the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279). Travelers to the area were encouraged to walk around the lake and surrounding district, and admire the various views of temples, caves and waterfalls. The Southern Song biographer Zhu Mu (d. ca. 1246) in his Fangyu shenglan (Topographical Guide to Touring Sites of Scenic Beauty), identified ten select vistas of the lake:
Autumnal Moon Reflected in a Calm Lake (pinghu qiuyue)
Spring Dawn Breaking Over Su Embankment (sudi chunxiao)
Lingering Snow upon Break-Off Bridge (duanqiao canxue)
Glow of Sunset upon Thunder Peak (leifeng xizhao)
Evening Bell-toll at South Screen Mountain (nanping wanzhong)
Breeze Amongst the Lotuses of Brewing Courtyard (quyuan fenghe)
Viewing Fish at Flower Harbour (huagang guanyu)
Listening to Orioles Amidst Billowing Willows (liulang wen ying)
Moon Reflected on Three Ponds (santan yinyue)
Twin Peaks Piercing Clouds (liangfeng chayun).
The Qing emperor Kangxi (r. 1662-1722) visited Hangzhou five times, and had a house built on a small island called Solitary Hill in the middle of the western end of West Lake. In the year 1700, the emperor inscribed the names of the ten vistas identified by Zhu Mu, which the local authorities inscribed in the emperor's handwriting onto stelae and had pavilions built to house each inscribed stone.
With its masterful painting and dynamic design, the present vase certainly ranks amongst the finest examples of porcelains featuring the theme of the ‘Ten views of West Lake’. The vivid scenes, depicted in fine pencil drawing with remarkable attention to minute detail, provide a valuable insight into how the West Lake looked in the 17th century.
The theme of the ‘Ten views of West Lake’ can be found on a famous Kangxi-period blue-and-white pear-shaped vase in the Shanghai Museum, illustrated by Sir Michael Butler and Wang Qingzheng, Seventeenth Century Jingdezhen Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum and the Butler Collections, Hong Kong/London, 2006, pp. 284-85 , no. 104. The Shanghai vase depicts eight views, some of which are identified by name plaques, and is decorated in the more typical Kangxi manner with stylized renditions of the pictorial elements and broad washes of underglaze blue to define the ground, trees, rocks and mountains.
A Kangxi-period five-piece blue-and-white garniture decorated with scenes likely depicting West Lake and painted in a similar style to the Shanghai vase is illustrated by M. A. Pinto de Matos in The RA Collection of Chinese Ceramics, vol. I, London, 2011, pp. 288-92, where it is noted another similarly decorated garniture is in the Zwinger Museum, Dresden, and a similarly decorated vase is in the Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm.
The fine painting on the current vase can be compared to a vase dated ca. late 1680s of similar shape, decorated with poems set amid a mountainous landscape, illustrated by J. B. Curtis in Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1995, pp. 82-83, no. 25.
Autumnal Moon Reflected in a Calm Lake (pinghu qiuyue)
Spring Dawn Breaking Over Su Embankment (sudi chunxiao)
Lingering Snow upon Break-Off Bridge (duanqiao canxue)
Glow of Sunset upon Thunder Peak (leifeng xizhao)
Evening Bell-toll at South Screen Mountain (nanping wanzhong)
Breeze Amongst the Lotuses of Brewing Courtyard (quyuan fenghe)
Viewing Fish at Flower Harbour (huagang guanyu)
Listening to Orioles Amidst Billowing Willows (liulang wen ying)
Moon Reflected on Three Ponds (santan yinyue)
Twin Peaks Piercing Clouds (liangfeng chayun).
The Qing emperor Kangxi (r. 1662-1722) visited Hangzhou five times, and had a house built on a small island called Solitary Hill in the middle of the western end of West Lake. In the year 1700, the emperor inscribed the names of the ten vistas identified by Zhu Mu, which the local authorities inscribed in the emperor's handwriting onto stelae and had pavilions built to house each inscribed stone.
With its masterful painting and dynamic design, the present vase certainly ranks amongst the finest examples of porcelains featuring the theme of the ‘Ten views of West Lake’. The vivid scenes, depicted in fine pencil drawing with remarkable attention to minute detail, provide a valuable insight into how the West Lake looked in the 17th century.
The theme of the ‘Ten views of West Lake’ can be found on a famous Kangxi-period blue-and-white pear-shaped vase in the Shanghai Museum, illustrated by Sir Michael Butler and Wang Qingzheng, Seventeenth Century Jingdezhen Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum and the Butler Collections, Hong Kong/London, 2006, pp. 284-85 , no. 104. The Shanghai vase depicts eight views, some of which are identified by name plaques, and is decorated in the more typical Kangxi manner with stylized renditions of the pictorial elements and broad washes of underglaze blue to define the ground, trees, rocks and mountains.
A Kangxi-period five-piece blue-and-white garniture decorated with scenes likely depicting West Lake and painted in a similar style to the Shanghai vase is illustrated by M. A. Pinto de Matos in The RA Collection of Chinese Ceramics, vol. I, London, 2011, pp. 288-92, where it is noted another similarly decorated garniture is in the Zwinger Museum, Dresden, and a similarly decorated vase is in the Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm.
The fine painting on the current vase can be compared to a vase dated ca. late 1680s of similar shape, decorated with poems set amid a mountainous landscape, illustrated by J. B. Curtis in Chinese Porcelains of the Seventeenth Century, New York, 1995, pp. 82-83, no. 25.