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Lot Essay
The scene painted on the present brush pot can be identified as “Farewell at the Long Pavilion” (Changting songbie), from the third act of the fourth book of the celebrated Yuan-dynasty drama, The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang ji). The act opens with the celebrated lines:
“Blue clouds fill the sky and yellow flowers cover the earth;
the west wind blows hard, and northern geese fly south.
Who has stained the frost-touched woods crimson at dawn?
It is all the tears of those who part.”
The scene depicts Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying speaking intimately as they reluctantly bid one another farewell. Cui’s handmaiden, Hongniang, stands attentively nearby with her back turned, while Zhang’s servant carries his luggage and leads a horse; in the distance, a carriage driver waits for their departure. Above, wild geese fly through the sky. The figures are rendered with remarkable animation, their gestures and expressions subtly conveying the sorrow of separation.
In the story, the impoverished scholar Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying, the daughter of a former chief minister, fall deeply in love, but their union is opposed by Cui’s mother because of the disparity in their social standing. Zhang is therefore required to travel to the capital and achieve success in the civil-service examinations before their marriage can be sanctioned. On the evening of his departure, Cui accompanies him to the Long Pavilion, where the lovers exchange their poignant farewells. Their story, centered on the conflict between genuine affection and social convention, became one of the most enduring celebrations of romantic love and individual choice in Chinese literature.
Scenes from The Romance of the Western Chamber were widely represented on seventeenth-century porcelain, their popularity encouraged by the circulation of illustrated editions of the drama. For example, the composition on the present brush pot is closely related to the woodblock illustration accompanying the “Farewell at the Long Pavilion” episode in the Ming-dynasty Dingjuan Chen Meigong xiansheng piping Xixiang ji (The Romance of the Western Chamber, Critically Annotated by Mr Chen Meigong). (Fig. 1)
This particular episode, however, appears to have been only rarely depicted on porcelain. Two Shunzhi-period blue-and-white dishes painted with the same scene and inscribed with verses identifying the subject are illustrated by Jin Liyan and Yang Ou in The Many Facets of Life: Porcelain of the 17th Century—Blue and White Porcelain with Narrative Scenes, vol. 1, Beijing, 2023, pp. 158–59, no. 41, and pp. 162–63, no. 43. The present brush pot therefore appears to be an exceptionally rare, and perhaps unique, surviving Shunzhi-period example of this subject in this form. Another related brush pot of similar size (7 3⁄8 in. high), with a rare scene of Zhou Yanzi, was sold at Christie's New York, 26-27 March 2026, lot 617.
This brush pot belonged to an esteemed collector who resided in Georgetown for over sixty years. She served in the White House under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and worked with S. Dillon Ripley, the American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist, during the time he served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1964 to 1984.
“Blue clouds fill the sky and yellow flowers cover the earth;
the west wind blows hard, and northern geese fly south.
Who has stained the frost-touched woods crimson at dawn?
It is all the tears of those who part.”
The scene depicts Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying speaking intimately as they reluctantly bid one another farewell. Cui’s handmaiden, Hongniang, stands attentively nearby with her back turned, while Zhang’s servant carries his luggage and leads a horse; in the distance, a carriage driver waits for their departure. Above, wild geese fly through the sky. The figures are rendered with remarkable animation, their gestures and expressions subtly conveying the sorrow of separation.
In the story, the impoverished scholar Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying, the daughter of a former chief minister, fall deeply in love, but their union is opposed by Cui’s mother because of the disparity in their social standing. Zhang is therefore required to travel to the capital and achieve success in the civil-service examinations before their marriage can be sanctioned. On the evening of his departure, Cui accompanies him to the Long Pavilion, where the lovers exchange their poignant farewells. Their story, centered on the conflict between genuine affection and social convention, became one of the most enduring celebrations of romantic love and individual choice in Chinese literature.
Scenes from The Romance of the Western Chamber were widely represented on seventeenth-century porcelain, their popularity encouraged by the circulation of illustrated editions of the drama. For example, the composition on the present brush pot is closely related to the woodblock illustration accompanying the “Farewell at the Long Pavilion” episode in the Ming-dynasty Dingjuan Chen Meigong xiansheng piping Xixiang ji (The Romance of the Western Chamber, Critically Annotated by Mr Chen Meigong). (Fig. 1)
This particular episode, however, appears to have been only rarely depicted on porcelain. Two Shunzhi-period blue-and-white dishes painted with the same scene and inscribed with verses identifying the subject are illustrated by Jin Liyan and Yang Ou in The Many Facets of Life: Porcelain of the 17th Century—Blue and White Porcelain with Narrative Scenes, vol. 1, Beijing, 2023, pp. 158–59, no. 41, and pp. 162–63, no. 43. The present brush pot therefore appears to be an exceptionally rare, and perhaps unique, surviving Shunzhi-period example of this subject in this form. Another related brush pot of similar size (7 3⁄8 in. high), with a rare scene of Zhou Yanzi, was sold at Christie's New York, 26-27 March 2026, lot 617.
This brush pot belonged to an esteemed collector who resided in Georgetown for over sixty years. She served in the White House under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and worked with S. Dillon Ripley, the American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist, during the time he served as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1964 to 1984.