Lot 801. An extremely rare and superbly painted blue and white 'dragon' jar and cover, Yuan dynasty; overall h. 36 cm. Lot Sold 28,435,000 HKD (Estimate 8,000,000 - 16,000,000 HKD) © Sotheby's 2025
 

sturdily potted with high shoulders tapering to a gently waisted foot, the exterior superbly decorated in rich cobalt-blue tones and powerfully decorated with a lengthy four-clawed dragon soaring through ruyi clouds above a border of crashing waves encircling the foot, all below a pendent lappet frieze enclosing Buddhist emblems around the shoulder and a band of waves encircling the neck, the base unglazed, the lotus-leaf cover surmounted by a small curled stem and adorned with thick irregular veins branching out from the centre to the undulating rim.
 

Provenance: Offered at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 5th November 1997, lot 1357 and back cover.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 2nd May 2000, lot 650.

Long Dragon, China’s Signature Image
Regina Krahl

 

In the long history of Chinese art, it will be hard to find a more vibrant dragon image or a more dynamic rendering of waves than those painted on this fabulous jar. The dragon is extraordinary in every respect and immediately calls to mind the most famous dragons in Chinese ceramics, those on the David Vases, the pair of temple vases from the Sir Percival David Collection in the British Museum, which are dated through dedicatory inscriptions equivalent to the year 1351 (fig. 1). Dragons of this type appear only on a very small group of exceptional blue-and-white porcelains of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), of which the present jar is a stellar example. With its large, majestic animal sweeping around the vessel, and its charming, exceedingly rare lotus-leaf cover, it is an iconic work of Yuan art.

fig. 1. The David Vases, Yuan dynasty, dated equivalent to AD1351,Courtesy of the Trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation; ©The Trustees of the British Museum
 

“In the long history of Chinese art, it will be hard to find a more vibrant dragon image or a more dynamic rendering of waves than those painted on this fabulous jar.”

In its painting style and most of its features the dragon on our jar is so closely related to the David Vases’ pair that they are likely to have been painted by the same hand. The David Vases, one of which was sold in our London rooms in 1935, have been discussed in detail in several articles by Peter Y.K. Lam, the dragons in particular in ‘The David Vases Revisited II: The Dragon Bands’, Orientations, January/February 2012, 40-49, where some of the most important comparisons are illustrated. Like on the David Vases, our dragon is painted as a powerful four-clawed creature, its body three-dimensionally rendered, with scales individually filled in with blue washes and separated by reserved white outlines, the underside of its body fringed with beading, the spine extending into flame-like spikes, carefully alternating in three different length. The mane, which is often missing on similar dragons and is absent also on the David Vases, is done with extra fine hair-line brush strokes, its wavy flow, together with the animal’s raised head and curved neck indicating its swift movement.

Lam shows that what he calls the ‘David-style dragon’ is strongly indebted to the most celebrated ink painter of dragons, Chen Rong (c. 1200–1266) of the Southern Song period, whose most famous painting of nine dragons in different attitudes breaking through clouds, today in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was painted in 1244 (acquisition no. 17.1697; Lam, fig. 5). An intermediary, who was even closer in time and place and thus perhaps more directly influential, may have been another dragon painter, Zhang Yucai (died 1316), Daoist ‘Celestial Master of Mount Longhu’ in Yingtan, south of Jingdezhen. In his ink painting Beneficent Rain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which undoubtedly was directly inspired by Chen’s handscroll, four vigorous dragons are emerging from clouds, see James C.Y. Watt, ed., The World of Khubilai Khan. Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, fig. 176 (acquisition no. 1985.227.2) (fig. 2). Because of his supposed rain-inducing powers Zhang was held in great favour at the Yuan imperial court.

fig. 2. Zhang Yucai, Beneficent Rain, Yuan dynasty, late 13th-early 14th century, ink on silk, handscroll, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Douglas Dillon, 1985, object no. 1985.227.2
 

“Dragons of this type appear only on a very small group of exceptional blue-and-white porcelains of the Yuan dynasty, of which the present jar is a stellar example. With its large, majestic animal sweeping around the vessel, and its charming, exceedingly rare lotus-leaf cover, it is an iconic work of Yuan art.”

These paintings established a dragon iconography that found its way not only onto porcelain, but is equally reflected in contemporary lacquerwares and textiles; for the former, see particularly a Yuan dynasty bracket-lobed black lacquer dish in the Tokyo National Museum, inlaid in mother-of-pearl with a very similar large dragon, included in the exhibition Sō Gen no bi. Denrai no shikki to chūshin ni/The Colors and Forms of Song and Yuan China. Featuring Lacquerwares, Ceramics, and Metalwares, Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, Tokyo, 2004, pl. 133. Although in textiles, bold dragons appeared already earlier, particularly in the north-eastern territory of the Liao, it is the Yuan animal as we see it here that became the blueprint for the classic long dragon, the signature image of China until today (see Liu Keyan, Yuandai fangzhipin wenyang yanjiu/Textile Pattern in Yuan Dynasty, Shanghai, 2018, pp. 23–40 and 119–26).

Dragons of the complexity of the animal seen on our jar were, however, far too onerous to paint, to enter the bulk production of porcelains at Jingdezhen, and are extremely rare in any medium. Only about a dozen blue-and-white vessels with a dragon comparable to the present one appear to be preserved. Besides the David Vases, one of the most famous comparisons is the extraordinary wide-necked meiping vase in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, published in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, ed. John Ayers, London, 1986, vol. 2, no. 578.

“The dragon is extraordinary in every respect and immediately calls to mind the most famous dragons in Chinese ceramics, those on the David Vases [...] In its painting style and most of its features the dragon on our jar is so closely related to the David Vases’ pair that they are likely to have been painted by the same hand.”

Three closely related jars with a similar single dragon are known, all without cover and somewhat smaller; one, with the animal moving in the opposite direction, enclosed between peony, cash diaper and petal panel borders, is in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo, published in Idemitsu Bijutsukan zōhin zuroku. Chūgoku tōji/Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl. 142; another, with only waves around the neck and below, is in the Tokyo National Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, vol. 1, Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, 1982, col. pl. 18; and the third, with the dragon between a lotus scroll and petal border, sold in these rooms, 26th October 1993, lot 36 and again 2nd May 2005, lot 641, is illustrated in Giuseppe Eskenazi in collaboration with Hajni Elias, A Dealer’s Hand. The Chinese Art World Through the Eyes of Giuseppe Eskenazi, London, 2012, pl. 298.

Among all these comparisons, the present dragon stands out through one minute, but mesmerising detail: while Yuan dragons generally gaze in the direction they are moving, the creature on our jar is clearly looking at us, its eyes turned sideways towards the viewer. We are not just distant observers of an animal far away in time and space, but through this dragon, the Yuan painter of this vessel has reached out to us across centuries, no matter where we are in the world. The best Yuan porcelains are never machine-like copies of given patterns but unique works of art painted by individual artists. This is not the only difference between this dragon and its counterparts, just the most enchanting.

“Dragons of the complexity of the animal seen on our jar were, however, far too onerous to paint [...] Only about a dozen blue-and-white vessels with a dragon comparable to the present one appear to be preserved.”

While Yuan works of art are almost universally vibrant and strong in execution, great differences in quality exist even between roughly contemporary wares. This is discussed in Regina Krahl, ‘Artists painting in cobalt blue. Yuan porcelain from the collection of Sir Joseph Hotung’ (Journal of International Ceramic Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, June 2025, 1-8), where artistically rendered Yuan motifs are compared with simplified versions of the same designs. The former – like the present jar – were individually conceived and therefore vary between each other, while the latter were usually executed in series and represent true multiples. As demand for Yuan blue-and-white rapidly grew, it must quickly have become uneconomical to treat every item like an individual work of art. How much painterly style and quality can vary even between basically identical designs becomes clear when comparing two flat flasks with dragon design, one from the collection of Sir Joseph Hotung, now in the British Museum, painted with a David-style dragon but with three claws, the other with a dragon simply pencilled in form of a line drawing, on a flask in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (ibid., figs 6 and 7).

Lam distinguishes three different types of blue-painted dragons on Yuan porcelain and by far the greatest number is much more rapidly sketched in outlines, in a flat, two-dimensional style, with scales either simply drawn in form of a net-like mesh, or else reduced even further to a hatched criss-cross pattern. The excavations of the Luomaqiao kiln site near Jingdezhen have shown that both types were done side by side in the same workshops; fragments of discarded jars painted with dragons of the type seen on our jar are illustrated in Weng Yanjun and Li Baoping, New Finds of Yuan Dynasty Blue-and-White Porcelain from the Luomaqiao Kiln Site, Jingdezhen: An Archaeological Approach, London, 2021, dust jacket, pl. 36: 4 and 6, and p. 75, fig. 3.19.21-4; for similar dragons on meiping fragments, see frontispiece, pl. 24 and p. 51, fig. 3.12.13-14; and a similar, large lotus-leaf cover is shown on p. 66, fig. 3.17.1.

The flat painting manner with net-like scales is found even on the few vessels excavated from the imperial kiln site and believed to have been made for the Yuan imperial house (Liang Sui, ed., Jingdezhen chutu Yuan Ming guanyao ciqi/Yuan’s and Ming’s Imperial Porcelain Unearthed from Jingdezhen, Yan-Huang Art Museum, Beijing, 1999, pls 1–5)(e.g. a chess-piece jar, fig. 3), even though they show five-clawed dragons. While the five-clawed dragon was an imperial prerogative in the Yuan, the significance of four- and three-clawed dragons is not yet clear. They do not seem to indicate different ranks, as they can even appear together on a single piece, as for example on a Yuan stem bowl, also in the Hotung collection (Regina Krahl, Early Chinese Blue-and-white Porcelain. The Mingzhitang Collection of Sir Joseph Hotung, Hong Kong, 2022, pp. 100-105).
 

fig. 3. Blue and white 'dragon' chess jar and cover, Yuan dynasty, h. 11.2 cm, excavated in 1988 at Fengjing Road, north foothills of Zhushan, Jingdezhen.
 

Besides its outstanding dragon, this Yuan jar is remarkable for another reason: it comes with a cover. With their elegant wavy edges and their central stems that are perfectly suited as knobs, the glorious dish-like leaves of the lotus plant seem to make natural covers. They appear on porcelain jars first in the Yuan dynasty, not only at Jingdezhen, but also on celadon jars from the Longquan kilns in Zhejiang. Covered blue-and-white Yuan jars are, however, so extremely rare, that their aspect may at first look unfamiliar. Covers in form of lotus leaves were not only used for dragon jars but for jars of any design, and the fact that their decoration does not specifically relate to the jars they come with, has in the past often given rise to doubts, whether they belong to the jars at all. A case in point is the famous Yuan jar with a figure scene in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, sold in our London rooms, 25th March 1975, lot 234 together with its lotus-leaf cover, which since then has been published by the museum almost invariably without it (e.g. Idemitsu Bijutsukan zōhin zuroku. Chūgoku tōji/Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, 1987, pl. 143); only more recently has it been exhibited united with its lotus-leaf lid in the Shanghai Museum Yuan exhibition (Chen Xiejun, Chen Kelun & Lu Minghua, Youlan shencai. Yuandai qinghua ciqi teji/Splendors in Smalt. Art of Yuan Blue-and-white Porcelain, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, 2012, pl. 3).

“Among all these comparisons, the present dragon stands out through one minute, but mesmerising detail: while Yuan dragons generally gaze in the direction they are moving, the creature on our jar is clearly looking at us [...] through this dragon, the Yuan painter of this vessel has reached out to us across centuries”

The many excavations and studies of Yuan blue-and-white that have been published over the last decades have provided no other type or style of cover for large, squat guan jars such as the present one, nor have any other vessels turned up, which would seem to make a more natural fit to these covers. The fact that lotus leaves are neutral in design and thus fit on jars with any kind of decoration had the distinct advantage for the potters that they could be individually made and fired, and matched at the kilns as needed. It seems therefore that any doubts can now be buried and lotus-leaf covers be accepted for jars of this shape, whatever their design. Another dragon jar with lotus leaf cover, similar to the present example but much smaller, was excavated from a hoard at Fangjiaba, east of Jurong city, Jiangsu province, and is now in the Jurong City Museum, see Zhongguo taoci quanji [Complete series on Chinese ceramics], vol. 11, Shanghai, 2000, pl. 152 (fig. 4). Lotus-leaf covers are also known from a pair of jars with narrow dragon bands excavated from the Gaoan hoard in Jiangxi (ibid., pl. 153).
 

fig. 4. Blue and white 'dragon' jar and cover, Yuan dynasty, overall h. 31.5 cm, excavated in 1985 from a Yuan dynasty hoard at Fangjiaba, Chengdong, Jurong City. Collection of the Jurong City Museum, Jiangsu Province.

Sotheby's. Imperial Connoisseurship Treasures of Chinese Art from A Prestigious Collection, Hong Kong, 21 November 2025