Lot 607. A highly important blue and white large 'fish' dish, Yuan dynasty, 14th century; 19 in. (48.2 cm.) diam. Estimate HKD 6,000,000 - HKD 8,000,000. Price realised HKD 9,974,100. © Christie's Image Ltd 2002

Finely painted in the central medallion with a single carp swimming amid waterweeds and aquatic plants, the deep well with low relief moulded peony flowers depicted full-face and in profile issuing from leafy branches with superbly detailed veins and petals, reserved on a blue-painted wave ground, the foliate rim decorated with a lingzhi scroll also moulded in relief on a blue ground, the reverse with a continuous lotus scroll, the cobalt of vibrant inky-blue tone, the base unglazed and burnt orange in the firing, wear to centre lightly buffed (fine hairline to interior well overpainted, fine star crack).

Property of the Jingguantang collection

Literature: Sotheby's Art at Auction, 1987-1988, p. 258.
Splendour of Ancient Chinese Art, Selections from the Collections of T.T. Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art Worldwide, Hong Kong, 1996, pl. 48.
John Carswell, Blue & White: Chinese Porcelain Around the World, London, 2000, pl. 5.

Note: Previously sold in New York, 12 September 1987, lot 256.

The design of this dish appears to be unique. The subject of fish among waterweed is a popular motif on Yuan blue and white porcelain. Its influence was probably inherited from well-known painters of fish such as Fan Anren, a painter of the Southern Song Academy active in the middle 13th Century. An example of a hanging scroll attributed to Fan Anren of a carp swimming among waterweed is illustrated in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, from the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, no.75. This decorative theme also appears on wares of different form, cf. a mid fourteenth century guan, illustrated by T. Misugi, Chinese Porcelain Collections in the Near East Topkapi and Ardebil, vol. II, no.T.1.

Related Yuan dishes painted with fish in the central medallion, but without the moulded peonies in the well, are recorded; one is illustrated by Pope, Chinese Porcelain from the Ardebil Shrine, pls. 9 and 11; another with a fish painted with a spiky dorsal fin surrounded by a lotus scroll in the well, is illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, vol. I, London, 1994, pl. 635.

The moulded lingzhi scroll on the rim appears to be unrecorded; moulded bands appear on the well of a number of examples with a different central design. Compare with a dish illustrated by R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, vol. II, no. 561, with a moulded peony scroll in the well, and no. 562, with a lotus scroll; for one in the S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, cf. the Catalogue to the Hong Kong Museum of Art exhibition, 1987, vol. I, col. pl. 2, an example moulded with fruit; and a dish in the British Museum, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics: The World's Greatest Collections, Kodansha Series, vol. 5, col. pl. 28, moulded with a lotus scroll.

Compare with another rare dish sold in London, 10 June 1986, lot 217, moulded with lotus scroll round the cavetto encircling the central medallion painted with a peahen alighting a flowering tree peony.

Christie's. The Imperial Sale, Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Hong Kong, 29 April 2002