With deep rounded sides rising to a gently everted rim, supported on a tall splayed foot encircled by a raised bowstring, vividly painted on the exterior with ten boys at play divided in four groups, engaged in various pursuits including dancing and sitting on the ground holding peaches and lotus flowers, all amongst blossoming lotus, pine, banana plant and ornamental rocks, the ribbed and slightly splayed foot with a band of stiff leaves, the well with a circular medallion depicting a bearded sage standing in a garden and holding a large peach.

Provenance: Vanderven & Vanderven Oriental Art,'S-Hertogenbosch, 31 August 1989
A European private collection.

Note: This remarkable stem cup is inspired by earlier Ming dynasty blue and white porcelain painted with a highly auspicious subject known as 'boys at play'. The theme underscores the important wish for welcoming sons, zhaozhi, who ensured the continuation of the family line and the performance of ancestral sacrifices. The subject may have been inspired by the story of Zhou Wang, founder of the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BC), who was blessed with ninety-nine sons from his twenty-four wives and adopted an orphaned boy to accomplish the even one-hundred.

Depictions of children also related to Buddhist and Daoist beliefs concerning the rebirth in heavenly realms. This can be noted on the subjects depicted on Buddhist stone steles and wall frescoes of stone caves dating to the sixth century, which often include boys issuing from lotus calyxes surrounding the main figure of the Buddha. In addition, according to the Daoist faith, children epitomised the ideal state where all actions were mindless and spontaneous, the necessary condition to attain the Dao and thus immortality; see E.Buck, The Eight Immortals on Yuan and Ming Ceramics London, 2000, p.133.

By the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907), images of joyful boys holding flowers, dancing and playing with one another was a popular secular theme, an auspicious symbol associated with the wishes for progeny, prosperity and overall well-being of the family. Depictions of young boys at play achieved a higher popularity during the Song (960-1279) and Jin dynasties (1115-1234). The theme was revived during the Ming dynasty, particularly during the reigns of the Yongle (1403-1424), Xuande (1426-1435), Chenghua (1465-1487) and Jiajing (1522-1566) emperors, when figure of boys in garden scenes decorated porcelain wares, serving thus as a probable prototype for the designs employed on the present lot.

Compare with a closely related blue and white stem cup decorated with ten boys at play, Wanli/Jiajing, illustrated by S.T.Yeo and J.Martin, Chinese Blue and White Ceramics, Singapore, 1978, pl.44, no.76; another related example, but painted with the Eight Daoist Immortals, Jiajing, from the Qing Court Collection, is illustrated in The Complete Treasures of the Palace Museum: Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (II),Hong Kong, 2000, no.149, p.160.

For a Xuande mark and period blue and white bowl decorated with the subject of boys at play from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, see Liao Pao Show, Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Selected Hsün-te Imperial Porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, no.152. For a Chenghua mark and period example, see A Legacy of Chenghua: Imperial Porcelain of the Chenghua Reign Excavated from Zushan, Jingdezhen, Hong Kong, 1993, pl.C73.

Private Sales at Bonhams