Chinese porcelain famille verte, wucai, square form bowl, Kangxi period, 1662-1722. Photo Marchant

with chamfered foliate corners, painted on each side with different scenes from the Romance of The Western Chamber; Zhang Sheng climbing the wall to visit Cui Yingying while her maid Hong Niang interrupts; Zhang Sheng seated at a table giving a letter to Hong Niang to deliver; the lovers meeting under the new moon and stars on a date arranged by Hong Niang, who peeps through the window; and Zhang Sheng talking to Hong Niang with his male servant listening behind a screen decorated with a sun above waves, all between prunus and bamboo branches, the interior painted in the well with a scholar seated on a carpet between a stack of tied books and a wrapped qin, beneath a band of lotus flowerheads and butterflies reserved on a green diaper ground. 7 ⅜ inches, 18.8 cm diameter. The base with a vessel mark within a double ring in underglaze blue. Wood stand. Price on request

Provenance: From a European private collection.

Purchased from Marc Michot, Bruges, Belgium, circa 2000.

Notes: A famille verte square bowl in the Tokyo National Museum, also painted with figural panels with black corners and foot rim, is illustrated by John Ayers and Masahiko Sato inSekai Toji Zenshu, Ceramic Art of the World, Volume 15, Ch’ing Dynasty, no. 182, p. 172. 

A pair of hexagonal bowls with figural panels in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv, no. AK-RBK 14731 A & B, from the Bequest of J. Spoor, 1936, is illustrated by Christiaan J. A. Jörg in Famille Verte, Chinese Porcelain in Green Enamels, in an exhibition held at the Groninger Museum, 2011, no. 80, pp. 80/1.

Bowls of this shape are rare and are more common in blue and white. One is illustrated by Chen Runmin in Qing Shunzhi Kangxi Chao Qinghua Ci, Qing Dynasty Shunzhi and Kangxi Period Blue and White in the Gugong Museum Collection, Beijing, no. 149, pp. 238/9; another with scenes from the Romance of The Western Chamber is illustrated by Stephen Little in the exhibition catalogue of Chinese Ceramics of the Transitional Period: 1620-1683, 1984, no. 55, pp. 120/1.