Lot 19. A Rare underglaze-Red Bowl. Ming Dynasty, Hongwu Period; 21 cm., 8 1/4  in. Estimation: 5,400,000 - 7,000,000 HKD. Unsold.  Photo Sotheby's

the deep rounded sides supported on a short straight foot, vividly painted on the interior with a central medallion enclosing a leafy peony spray and an attendant bud within a double-line border, surrounded by a chrysanthemum scroll on the walls, all below a band of key-fret at the rim, the exterior similarly painted with a leafy peony scroll wreathed by a foliate stem between key-fret borders at the rim and foot, the red varying in shades from a vivid purplish tone to a pale reddish-grey, the base glazed. 

PROVENANCE: Sotheby’s New York, 28th May 1991, lot 218.

EXHIBITED: Evolution to Perfection. Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection/Evolution vers la perfection. Céramiques de Chine de la Collection Meiyintang, Sporting d’Hiver, Monte Carlo, 1996, cat. no. 104.

LITTERATURE: Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994-2010, vol. 2, no. 645.

NOTE: A copper-red painted bowl of similar size and decoration, formerly in the collection of W.W. Winkworth and now the collection of the Hon. Kate Trevelyan, on loan to the British Museum, is illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p. 91, fig. 1.
Three fragments of similar underglaze-red painted bowls in the Palace Museum, Beijing, are included in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang gu taoci ciliao xuancui [Selection of ancient ceramic material from the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2005, vol. 1, pls. 79-81, one of very similar design as the present bowl, where it is stated, p. 106, that this type matches sherds excavated from the remains of the Ming imperial palace in Nanjing. Bowls of this type
are more frequently found with a flared rim; for a complete piece in the Palace Museum, Beijing, from the Qing court collection see The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red, Shanghai, 2000, vol. 1, pl. 222.
Another flared bowl in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, is illustrated in Mingdai chunian ciqi tezhan mulu/Catalogue of a Special Exhibition of Early Ming Period Porcelain, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1982, cat. no. 51; one in the National Museum of China, Beijing, is illustrated in Zhongguo Guojia Bowuguan guancang wenwu yanjiu congshu/Studies on the Collections of the National Museum of China. Ciqi juan [Porcelain section], Mingdai [Ming dynasty], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 8; and one in the Shanghai Museum in Lu Minghua, Shanghai Bowuguan zangpin yanjiu daxi/Studies of the Shanghai Museum Collections : A Series of Monographs. Mingdai guanyao ciqi [Ming imperial porcelain], Shanghai, 2007, pl. 1-1, together with a blue-and-white counterpart with straight sides, pl. 3-7. 
A misfired blue-and-white version of this design on a bowl with slightly flared rim was excavated from the waste heaps of the kiln site at Zhushan, Jingdezhen, and included in the exhibition Jingdezhen chutu Ming chu guanyao ciqi/Imperial Hongwu and Yongle Porcelain Excavated at Jingdezhen, Chang Foundation, Taipei, 1996, cat. no. 14.

Sotheby's. The Meiyintang Collection, Part V - An Important Selection of Imperial Chinese Porcelains. Hong Kong | 08 avr. 2013