Large Chinese porcelain famille verte, wucai, baluster vase and cover, Kangxi period, 1662-1722. Photo Marchant.

painted with leaf, fan, ruyi, rectangular and pomegranate-shaped panels on a green speckled prunus flowerhead ground, variously depicting the Emperor Yao and his attendants meeting the ox herder Xu You, trying to persuade him to take the reins of government, from the Zhou Dynasty story, a scholar sleeping and dreaming meeting a monk and his attendant, a General standing in front of his tiger skin covered chair putting his foot on a casket being presented to him, a scholar and his attendant meeting a fisherman, a tiger beneath the moon, qilin and young, bixie and bird, four with precious objects, three with flowers and four with landscapes, beneath a scroll, bud and ruyi-head band at the neck, the cover with three leaf-shaped panels of flowers, rockwork and insects on a similar ground, beneath a bud form finial. The base unglazed. 23 ⅞ inches, 60.1 cm total height with cover. Price on request

Provenance: From the collection of the Duke of Leinster.

Notes: A similar baluster vase and cover with figure and landscape panels, acquired in May 1722 from the dealer Madame Bassetouche, is illustrated by Eva Ströber in La Maladie de Porcelaine, no. 26, pp. 66/7; two others, from the collection of Dr. Leonard Gow, are illustrated by The Earl of Lytton, Sir William Llewellyn and Laurence Binyon in Catalogue of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, 1935-6, Royal Academy of Arts, London, no. 1817 & 1829, pl. 172, p. 152/3; one of a pair is illustrated by R. L. Hobson C. B. in The Leonard Gow Collection of Chinese Porcelain, no. 146, colour pl. XXXI, p. 42/3.

A slender vase with figural panels on a similar ground in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, formerly in the collection of R. May, is illustrated by Christiaan J. A. Jörg in Famiile Verte Chinese Porcelain in Green Enamels, no. 78, p. 78.