Lot 313. A fine and rare 'Windswept' meiping, Ming dynasty, 15th century. H. 31,3 cm. Sold: €33,000 (Estimate €10,000 - €15,000). Courtesy Nagel.  

Finely-potted with high swelling shoulders rising to a narrow neck and everted rim, superbly painted around the sides in 'windswept' style with two scholars conversing in a clearing as a third scholar approaches carrying a wrapped qin under his arm and attendant, a pavilion nearby with elaborate trelliswork set amidst billowing clouds, between ruyi-form lappets enclosing stylized lotus scroll around the shoulders and a row of high petal lappets around the foot, all within double and single-line borders, the base unglazed with a low rounded foot rim.

Provenance: Old South German private collection, previously mounted as lamp (c. 1920's).

Note: This fine vase belongs to a special group of porcelains decorated with figural scenes that was produced between the 15th and early 16th century. They stem from a style developed in the interregnum period, when political unrest and economic deprivation had allowed commercial kilns to flourish and freed craftsmen from the tight restriction of work executed to palace orders. This led to a revival of the free and naturalistic style popular in porcelain wares painted with figures during the Yuan dynasty. A porcelain shard painted with a scholar wearing long billowing robes, was recovered from the interregnum stratum at Zhushan, and included in the exhibition Ceramic Finds from Jingdezhen Kilns, The Fung Ping Shan Museum, Hong Kong, 1992, cat. no. 230.

A comparable meiping, also similarly painted on the shoulder with lotus scrolls enclosed in ruyi-heads, in the Grandidier collection, in the Musée Guimet, Paris, is illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, Tokyo, 1981, vol. 7, pl. 56; one in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, was included in the exhibition Chinese Porcelain of the Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1977, cat. no. 16; another was sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong 15.11.1988, lot 125; and a fourth was sold at Christie’s London, 16.3.1986, lot 145. Compare also the similar meiping from the collection of Charles E. Russell (1866-1960), London, sold at Sotheby's N.Y. 13.9.2016, lot 278 - Drilled hole through base, very minor traces of age. 

Nagel Auction. Fine Asian Art - Day I, Stuttgart, 12 june 2023