Lot 3644. A fine and rare blue and white Chenghua-style 'Landscape' bowl, Mark and period of Kangxi (1662-1722); 20.1 cm., 7 7/8  in. Estimate  5,000,000 — 7,000,000  HKD. Lot sold 6,080,000 HKD (784,320 USD). © Sotheby's

finely potted with deep rounded sides rising from a short straight foot to a slightly everted rim, the exterior decorated in underglaze blue with a continuous scene depicting three scholars conversing in a rural landscape near a pine tree and accompanied by two attendants carrying a scroll, the setting carefully picked out with large plantain leaves issuing from behind jagged rockwork and bamboo shoots, a pavilion depicted emerging amidst the cloud scrolls, the interior centred with a medallion enclosing verdant vegetation and rockwork, all painted in soft washes of blue within thin outlines, the base inscribed with a six-character reign mark within a double-circle.

Note: In the 44th year of the Kangxi reign (1705), Lang Tingji was appointed the Prefect of the Jiangxi province, upon which he established kilns to produce porcelain in imitation of Ming wares, particularly those of the Xuande (1426-35) and Chenghua (1465-1487) periods. The present bowl is likely to have been created after this time in its Chenghua-style decoration of an ethereal scene of windswept figures within a landscape.

Notable for its delicate depiction of figures in a landscape, bowls decorated with this design are rare. Kangxi bowls of this Chenghua-inspired type are more commonly found painted with a scene of a meiren or boys at play. See a shallow bowl, the form also inspired by 15th century porcelain, decorated with a scene of ladies in a terraced garden, with a Kangxi mark and of the period, in the Palace Museum, published in Chen Runmin, Qing Shunzhi Kangxi qiao qinghua ci, Beijing, 2005, pl. 127. A slightly smaller Chenghua bowl of this form, decorated with a lady in a pavilion within a garden, with a Chenghua mark and of the period, was included in the exhibition The Emperor’s Broken china. Reconstructing Chenghua Porcelain, Sotheby’s, London, 1995, cat. no. 58.

Chenghua bowls of this type were inspired by Xuande prototypes which were also reproduced in the Qing dynasty, for example see a bowl painted with Xi Wangmu riding a crane within a mountainous and cloudy landscape, with an apocryphal Xuande mark, sold in these rooms, 20th May 1981, lot 733, and published in The Leshantang Collection of Chinese Porcelain, Taipei, 2005, pl. 27; and its 15th century original, in the National Palace Museum, included in the Museum’s Special Exhibition of Selected Hsuan Te Porcelains of the Ming Dynasty, Taipei, 1998, cat. no. 148.

The scene adorning the exterior of this bowl, with the three scholars in a landscape with two attendants, is cleverly echoed in the medallion in the interior which depicts the three friends of winter. Scholars in a landscape evoked well-known historical figures, such as the Song dynasty poet Lin Hejing, who abandoned official life in the city and retired to live in the tranquillity of the country.  The two young attendants juxtaposed with the scholars suggest the passing on of knowledge while the three trees represent ideal traits of a scholar: the pine symbolises nobility and venerability, bamboo that of resilience and the plantain tree for education.

Sotheby's. Important Chinese Works of Art, Hong Kong, 07 april 2015