A blue and white 'Three Friends of Winter' bowl, Kangxi six-character mark and of the period (1662-1722); 19.6cm (7 6/8in) diam. Asking price: £34,000. © Bonhams.

The deep rounded sides rising to a gently everted rim, freely painted on the exterior in varying shades of cobalt blue with the 'Three Friends of Winter', pine, prunus and bamboo, as well as lingzhi fungus, the interior with a central medallion painted with a grouping of the same plants repeated on the band surrounding the rim, the base with the six-character mark in underglaze blue within a double circle.

Provenance: Marchant, London, 13 May 2003
A European private collection.

Note: This remarkable bowl depicts a popular design known as the 'Three Friends of Winter', which appears to have originated in the Yuan dynasty. See for example a blue and white bowl, mid-14th century, illustrated by R.Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Museum, vol.2, p.496, fig.571.

The 'Three Friends of Winter', suihan sanyou, represent the perseverance of the scholar gentleman under adversity. Each of the 'Three Friends' possesses a special quality: the pine, growing during winter is associated with steadfastness, the bamboo, withstanding the cold winds, bending but not breaking, with flexibility, and the prunus, the first to blossom, is a harbinger of spring and renewal.

The ninth-century poet Zhu Qingyu referred to the 'cool beauty, cold fragrance, and spotless purity' in a poem on the prunus blossom which he joined to the noble plants of pine and bamboo, and shared the prunus's ability to withstand the hardships of winter; see M.Bickford, Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre, Cambridge, 1996, p.53.

The technique of conveying the texture of furry pine needles issuing from old trunks, the essence of bursting buds on spiky branches and the languorous bending bamboo as painted on the present bowl, may have been inspired or influenced by the painting style of the late Ming dynasty artist Chen Hongshu; for further discussion see J.Hay, Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art, New York, 1986, p.135.

Compare with a similar blue and white 'Three Friends of Winter' bowl, Kangxi mark and period, which was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 1 June 2011, lot 3508.

Private Sales at Bonhams