Lot 8005. A very rare wucai 'Boys' jar, Jiajing six-character mark in underglaze blue and of the period (1522-1566). 5 1/2 in. (14 cm.) high. Estimate HKD 2,000,000 - HKD 3,000,000 (USD 257,337 - USD 386,006). Price realised HKD 4,420,000. © Christies Images Ltd 2017

The jar is painted with bright enamels with a continuous scene of eight boys at play engaged in various pursuits, including riding a wooden horse, holding a lotus leaf as a canopy, flying a flag, holding a vase, and spinning a top, interspersed with ornamental rocks and pine trees under swirling clouds and a band of downward over-lapping plantain leaves on the sloping shoulder, Japanese wood box.

Provenance: Sold at Sotheby’s London, 11 December 1984, lot 303
An East Asian private collection
Sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 31 October 2004, lot 113.

Note: While the subject of boys at play was very popular on imperial porcelain produced during the Jiajing reign, those decorated in the wucai palette are very rare. Only two other Jiajing-marked jars of this design appear to have been published, one from the Lauritzen collection is illustrated by Osvald Siren, Kinas konst under tre årtusenden, vol. 2, Stockholm, 1942, fig. 543, which has a reduced neck; and the second was formerly in the collections of A.T. and Montague L. Meyer, sold at Sotheby’s London, 10 July 1951, lot 84, and again 17 February 1959, lot 92, from the Kolkhorst Collection, and then again 14 April 1970, lot 92.

The design continued into the Wanli period, see for example, a Wanli marked jar illustrated in Mayuyama, Seventy Years, vol. 1, Tokyo, 1976, no. 934; and another sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 26 September 1989, lot 585. The painting style on both of these jars is much more stylised and less refined than their predecessors.

Christie's. Important Ming Imperial Works of Art from The Le Cong Tang Collection Evening Sale, 27 November 2017, Hong Kong