Lot 9. A large blue and white and copper-red 'Virtuous Aunt' dish, Chenghua six-character mark, Early Kangxi period (1662-1722); 36cm (14 1/4in) diam. Sold for £22,950  (Estimate £20,000-£30,000). © Bonhams 2001-2022

Finely potted with deep curving sides rising from a channelled foot ring to a slightly everted rim, the interior painted with an elegant lady with high chignon and clad in long flowing robes carrying a smiling boy on her back, the hem of her dress in underglaze red, all amidst craggy rocks, the underside with the mark in underglaze blue within a double circle. 

Provenance: an English private collection
Roger Keverne Ltd., London, 2013.

Published, Illustrated and Exhibited: Roger Keverne Ltd., Winter Exhibition, London, 2013, no.30.

Note: Depictions of women and children are common themes on Chinese porcelain, upholding the Confucian values of filial piety towards one's parents but also the mother's duty to instruct her son and be a paragon of virtue. Such depictions on porcelain could relate to a specific scene in a novel or play, but it is difficult to attribute. The image on the present lot shows a woman carrying a boy on her back, her leg is high up, indicating she running or moving quickly, while looking back. It could therefore, relate to woodblock illustrations of the Lienu zhuan ('Biographies of Exemplary Women') and the story of 'The Virtuous Aunt'.

The story recounts that when troops from the state of Qi entered Lu, they came upon a rural woman walking in the countryside, carrying her own son and leading her husband's elder brother's son by the hand. Fearing that she did not have the strength to rescue both children from the invaders, she flung her own son down, picked up her nephew and fled. Her son was captured by the Qi troops, and when they eventually reached her as well, the soldiers asked her why she had made the choice she did. She responded that her relationship to her son is private love, but her nephew is 'public duty':

If I had turned my back on public duty and pursued private love, abandoning my brother's child to save my own child, even if by some good fortune I had escaped, still the Lord of Lu would not succour me, officials would not nourish me, and ordinary countrymen would have nothing to do with me. If I were to do this, then my body would nowhere be at ease, and my tired feet would have nowhere to step. Although it is painful to lose my son, what is the meaning of righteousness? Although I can bear to abandon my son and practice righteousness, I cannot bear to live in the state of Lu without righteousness. See Children in Chinese Art, Honolulu, 2002, p.99.

The virtuous Aunt thus became a paragon of Confucian virtue for her dedication to public virtue over private love. In the early Kangxi period, when this dish was made, many would still remember the chaos and destruction from the Manchu invasion in 1644, and stories of invading soldiers and retreating women and children and issues of public service over private interests, would have tugged at the hearts of those living in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

Stylistically, depictions of women on porcelain from this period appear to have been strongly influenced by Chen Hongshou (1598-1652). Chen painted his figures with relatively large heads with high chignon and thin graceful bodies. Chen was also extremely active within the printing industry, hence his designs often came to the attention of craftsmen who could copy them. See for example, the painting 'Flowers in His Hair' by Chen Hongshou, illustrated in Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, New Haven and London, 1997, p.243.

For a related example of a blue and white dish with a lady, Kangxi, see M.Butler, M.Medley and S.Little, Seventeenth-Century Chinese Porcelain from the Butler Family Collection, Alexandria, 1990, p.167, no.113; another related blue and white dish with a lady, Kangxi six-character mark and of the period, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Qing Shunzhi Kangxi Chao Qinghuaci, Beijing, 2005, p.123, no.61. See also a related blue and white dish, Kangxi, illustrated by H.Garner, Oriental Blue and White, London, 1970, p.46, pl.D..

Bonhams. THE MARSH COLLECTION ART FOR THE LITERATI, 3 November 2022, London, New Bond Street