Lot 262. A famille rose blue and white 'Nine peaches' vase, Wang Bu (1898-1968). 14 ½ in. (37 cm.) high. Estimate GBP 300,000 - GBP 500,000. Price realised GBP 728,750. © Christie's Image Ltd 2017

The elegantly potted vase is decorated with nine famille rosepeaches executed in shades of powder pink on a pale yellow ground. The underglaze blue leafy branch bearing these peaches is depicted in free strokes and the depth conveyed in varying shades of cobalt blue.

Provenance: Private German Collection, amassed in the mid-20th century.
Phillips, London, 12th November 2001, lot 159.
The collection of Peter Wain, London.

A MAGNIFICENT VASE DECORATED WITH A FRUITING BRANCH OF PEACHES IN UNDERGLAZE COBALT BLUE
AND OVERGLAZE ENAMELS BY WANG BU (1898-1968)
Rose Kerr
Independent Academic Consultant
Former Keeper of East Asian Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In traditional China the painting of porcelain was not regarded as an art. Painting on silk or paper was regarded as the highest form of visual culture, indicative of educated refinement, while porcelain was merely a decorative craft. Until the Qing dynasty, the success of Jingdezhen painted porcelain was judged on perfect potting and refined decoration. The finished product was appraised as a single entity, even though different, anonymous, specialists worked on forming, firing and decoration. The situation changed in the late nineteenth century, when a few intellectuals turned their attention to painting on porcelain. Their efforts met with success and in the early twentieth century the activity of porcelain painters at Jingdezhen burgeoned. From this time onwards, the painting of art ceramics has been regarded as a true art, while the potters remain anonymous. 

Wang Bu was one of the second generation of porcelain painters at Jingdezhen. He had the courtesy name (字) Renyuan 仁元, adopted the pseudonym (號) Zhuxi Daoren 竹溪道人 and in later life called himself Taoqing Laoren 陶青老人, naming his studio Yuan Wen Wu Guo Zhi Zhai 願聞五過之齋.He was born in Fengchengxian in Jiangxi province, about 300 kilometres southwest of Jingdezhen. Wang was apprenticed at the age of nine, learning to decorate porcelain with underglaze cobalt blue, one of the hardest techniques. He thus entered the Jingdezhen porcelain industry at the very moment that it was emerging from the doldrums of the late Qing dynasty. 

During the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) the finest porcelain manufacture, research and decoration had traditionally been undertaken at the imperial factory. By the late nineteenth century the factory was in decline, having never recovered from the destruction wrought by Taiping rebels between 1854 and 1864. In 1882 the scientific researcher Francisque Scherzer visited Jingdezhen to collect samples. He reported the imperial factory buildings in ruins, with a demoralised workforce paid at little more than the general rate available in the city. Chinese authors also had a sad view of contemporary porcelain production. In 1910 Chen Liu lamented in his book Tao Ya (Ceramic Refinements): “Today our Chinese porcelain is in sad decline, the craftsmanship is no good and the material is rough and crude.” 

However, the demise of the imperial porcelain factory had one good outcome, in that it released a group of highly trained and skilled decorators onto the private market. They joined a talented group of master porcelain painters working for private firms and in their own studios, such as Wang Yeting, He Xuren, Wang Qi, Wang Dafan, Xu Zhongnan, Deng Bishan, Cheng Yiting and Wang Bu. Moreover, a significant decline in skills is contradicted by the fact that Jingdezhen porcelains won gold medals at International Exhibitions in France in 1911, in Belgium in 1914, in Japan in 1914, in Panama in 1915 and in San Fransisco in 1915. 

Meanwhile, Wang Bu continued his training. For a period in his youth he decorated bird-feeders in overglaze enamels, which familiarised him with the use of enamels and the practice of painting in miniature on tiny vessels. When he was a little older he joined the staff of a professional workshop owned by Wu Aisheng (1896-1926), called Hexing Ci Zhuang (Hexing Porcelain Village). Wu Aisheng was an entrepreneur with business links in Hong Kong and Singapore, whose family originally came from Guangzhou. Wu had received a good education including in science subjects, and during his seventeen years in Jingdezhen he brought about a significant number of innovations. In Wu’s workshop Wang Bu at first made copies of Kangxi blue-and-white, and then, under the influence of other famous Jingdezhen painters such as Wang Qi, started to practise traditional Chinese painting in earnest. This matured his expertise with the brush, a skill which he also employed to decorate porcelain with landscapes, figures and birds-and-flowers.  

During the 1920s skilled decorator Wang Xiaotang (1885-1924) led a new movement that created fresh techniques for applying overglaze enamel decoration. Wang Xiaotang had started his career by painting round and folding fans in Hangzhou, so had great dexterity in creating designs on irregular surfaces. Wang Bu was inspired by this new approach and took it one stage further, by combining underglaze blue decoration with the new enamelling style. This was more tricky because the ceramics needed an initial firing to mature the underglaze blue, before up to ten layers of enamel colour were applied, each of which needed separate low-temperature firings. This technical and artistic mastery gained him both domestic and international recognition.  

By the late 1930s Jingdezhen once again endured decline, caused by the Japanese occupation. Although the city never fell into Japanese hands it was bombed several times from the air, and more than thirty kilns were reduced to rubble. Other factories shut and workers lost their jobs, the industry shrinking by two-thirds. The Second World War had a further devastating effect and matters did not significantly improve until after the revolution of 1949, when the state re-assumed control and set about restoring production. The first step was to grant loans to craftsmen so they could get going again. To improve the provision of raw materials such as clay, colouring materials and fuel, the government nationalised supply depots. It also undertook the transport and marketing of finished wares. Recovery was slow, for by the mid 1950s Russian scientists reported about 70 large kilns were again in operation, firing at the rate of 5-6 times per month.  

Wang Bu was a survivor, learning to live with whatever circumstances came his way. In the 1950s he followed Mao Zedong’s credo of combining Eastern traditions with Western modernism, by integrating the traditional, painterly styles he was well versed in, with ideas taken from Western art. He created a series of extraordinary blue and white porcelains that employed their plain white porcelain surface as part of the overall design. The viewer was thereby encouraged to create an overall picture, from their own imagination. In 1955, Wang Bu joined a Sino-German and Sino-Czech technical cooperation in Jingdezhen, whose purpose was to facilitate exchange between East German, Czech and Chinese artists and to generate new dimensions in blue-and-white painting. Between 1955 and 1959 he created a number of outstanding blue and white porcelain works, whose spirit is reflected in this particular vase. 

The vase developed a traditional motif that had been utilised on top-quality porcelain since the Yongzheng period (1723-35). Imperial wares bore a design of bats and peaches in delicate famille rose enamels. The pattern is highly decorative but also embodies a pun wishing long life and happiness (福壽雙全). Wang Bu took this traditional motif one step further. He omitted the bats, but skilfully painted the peach tree leaves to simulate an illusion of hovering bats. The underglaze blue painting showcased his robust brushwork, the painterly effect built up with a series of small, broken strokes to create three-dimensional effects of movement. The high-temperature underglaze blue painting of the leafy branch was successfully combined with delicately overglaze-enamelled peaches. The fruit’s skin was suggested perfectly, in tones of yellow and pink with darker pink flecks. 

Wang Bu must have been very satisfied with the result, for both colours emerged from the kilns in perfect states. The vase represents a highlight in the mature phase of his potting and is a rarity, for he only created two vases of this kind. One remained in Jingdezhen and is now in the Jingdezhen China Ceramics Museum, illustrated by Wang Bu et. al., Qing hua qing yun: shang, Beijing, 2004, p. 18. That piece is marked “ Made in Jingdezhen 1955”. The vase discussed here came to Europe with the German artists who had collaborated with potters at Jingdezhen. 

(fig. 1 圖1) Vase in the Jingdezhen China Ceramics Museum

References: Chen Liu, Tao Ya (Ceramic Refnements) (陶瓷譜錄, 1910)
Ueda Kyosuke, Chugoku tojino jidaiteki kenkyu (Modern Research on Chinese Porcelain) (Tokyo, 1929)
G. L. Efremov, “Art porcelain in the Chinese People’s Republic” Stecklo I Keramika 13 (2) (Moscow, 1956), pp.490-497
Jiangxi sheng qinggongye taoci yanjiusuo (Ceramic Research Division of Jiangxi Province Light Engineering), 江西省輕工業廳陶
瓷研究所, Jingdezhen taoci shigao (A Draft History of the Pottery Industry at Jingdezhen) (Beijing, 1959)
Georges Francisque Fernand Sceherzer, “A Trip to Jingdezhen”, in Robert Tichane, Ching-Te-Chen : Views of a Porcelain City ( New
York 1983), pp.187-202
Urban Council, Hong Kong, Brush and Clay. Chinese Porcelain of the Early 20th Century (Hong Kong, 1990)
Rose Kerr (ed) and Nigel Wood, Science and Civilisation in China, volume V, part 12, Ceramic Technology (Cambridge, 2004)
Liu Jinsheng (ed), Qinghua qingyun (shang) Wang Bu taoci shijia zuopin ji (The Delight of Blue-and-White (1) A Worldwide Collection of Pieces by Wang Bu) (Beijing, 2004)

Christie's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art, 7 November 2017, London