Lot 6. The Personal Collection of the late Sir Joseph Hotung. An important and exceptionally painted blue and white 'fish' jar, guan, Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368); w. 35.3 cm. Lot sold: 39,700,000 HKD. (Estimate: 20,000,000 - 25,000,000 HKD). © Sotheby's 2022

 the sturdily-potted baluster body rising from a spreading foot to a short straight neck with a lipped rim, superbly painted around the body in vibrant cobalt blue with four fishes swimming in a pond amidst large blooming lotus flowers and various aquatic plants, the lively scene detailed with two butterflies hovering above, the neck encircled with cresting waves painted with calligraphic precision, the rounded shoulder with large peony blooms borne on a continuous leafy scroll, with the blooms alternating in frontal and profile views, all above stylised upright petals enclosing various precious emblems and flaming pearls, the broad foot ring and recessed base unglazed.

Provenance: A European private collection.
Christie’s London, 11th July 2006, lot 111 and back cover.
Eskenazi Ltd, London, 2006.

Literature: Rosemary Scott, ‘A Magnificent and Rare 14th Century Fish Jar’, Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Including Export Art, Christie’s London, 2006, pp. 108-11.
Huo Jishu (Jessica Harrison-Hall), ‘Yuandai qinghua ci: Da Ying Bowuguan yu Daweide Jijinhui cang pin/Yuan Dynasty Blue-and-White: Collections and Collectors in the British Museum and Sir Percival David Collection’, in Li Zhongmou et al., Youlan shencai. 2012 Shanghai Yuan qinghua guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji/Splendors in Smalt. Art of Yuan Blue-and-white Porcelain Proceedings, Shanghai, 2015, vol. 1, p. 389, fig. 23.
Regina Krahl, Early Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain. The Mingzhitang Collection of Sir Joseph Hotung, Hong Kong, 2022, no. 8.

Exhibited: British Museum, London, on loan, 2012.

Spiritual Freedom in the Yuan Dynasty
Regina Krahl

‘The Pleasures of Fishes’ is the title of a handscroll painting by Zhou Dongqing, a ‘fish painter’ active in the Yuan dynasty, almost six meters long, dated in accordance with 1291, and today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Stephen Little with Shawn Eichman, Taoism and the Arts of China, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2000, no. 7) (fig. 1). Zhou was a native of Jiangxi and his paintings were most likely well known to the porcelain painters of Jingdezhen.

fig. 1. Zhou Dongqing (Chinese, active late 13th century), Pleasures of Fish, Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), dated 1291. Handscroll; ink and color on paper. Image: 12 1/8 x 19 ft 4 in. (30.8 cm x 593.7 cm) Overall with mounting: 12 5/8 x 441 3/4 in. (32.1 x 1122 cm). From the Collection of A. W. Bahr, Purchase, Fletcher Fund, 1947, 47.18.10 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ink paintings with naturalistic scenes featuring fishes are recorded in China since the 3rd century and were a recognized genre of ink painting at the Song dynasty (960-1279) imperial painting academy. The precise observation of different varieties of fish and their movements under water was considered particularly challenging since observation from nature is difficult, and represented the kind of technical mastery that was admired at court. Liu Cai (active c. 1080-1120) was a court painter, who specialized in paintings of fishes already in the late Northern Song, and in the Southern Song dynasty, Emperor Lizong (r. 1224-64) invited another fish painter, Fan Anren, a native of Zhejiang, to paint for the court.

Fish paintings were, however, not just stupendous exercises of the brush; among China’s literati they were also revered because they carried a deeper meaning. The genre was held in great esteem for its Daoist association, with fish being considered the manifestation of spiritual freedom, one of the eternal ideals of China’s intellectuals. In the Yuan dynasty, the topic was taken over by scholar painters. For the literati-officials loyalist to the deposed Song dynasty, this sentiment must have evoked bitter-sweet associations with their own freedom from the constraints of a government position, under the Mongol-ruled dynasty.

Fish paintings were always associated with a famous passage in the book Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou (c. 369-286 BC), Daoism’s leading proponent, and a colophon on Zhou’s painting ‘The pleasures of fishes’ explicitly refers to it. It relates a discussion between Zhuangzi and the Confucian Huizi about the pleasures of fishes. While Zhuangzi claims that freely darting about as they please, is what fish really enjoy, Huizi counters that Zhuangzi, not being a fish, cannot know what fish enjoy. The exchange ends with Zhuangzi, guided by Daoist intuition, winning the argument over the Confucian, who employs formalist reasoning.

Fish among water plants represent one of the most powerful designs of Yuan blue-and-white porcelain. The porcelain painter responsible for the scene on the present jar admirably rendered the serene state of the four fat fishes, grouped in pairs, silently floating through water plants, seemingly at total ease in their surroundings. Even without the historic philosophical reading of this motif, the scene emanates an air of peace and contentment, transferring the viewer to the idyllic scenery of a lake in the Jiangnan region of south-eastern China, whose still surface is covered with large green lotus leaves and their ravishing white and pink flowers and whose clear waters are teeming with golden-orange and silvery-blue fish.

Grouped in two pairs swimming towards each other, the fishes here depict a mandarin fish, easy to recognize by its strongly patterned – in real life very colourful – skin and round tail fin and three different fish of the carp family. The carp at the end of Zhou’s handscroll is depicted in the leaping pose, also seen on this jar, which evokes the carp turning into a dragon and for China’s scholars embodied the student succeeding at the official examinations that opened the path to a government career. If the ink paintings of this theme may have served the painters as models for the fish, they would not have found samples of the large clumps of lotus there, as water plants on these fish paintings are clearly subordinate to the main subject, the fish. On this jar, the lotus plants are so magnificently painted that they are at least as important for the complete picture as the fishes between them. Naturalistically rendered, we see them in different stages of maturation and decay, with buds turning to fully opened blooms and eventually to pods, and fresh curly leaves juxtaposed with wilting and shrivelled ones with frilly edges, suspended on broken stems. The painter went to great lengths to employ varying tones of cobalt blue like different tones of black ink would be used in paintings on paper or silk. The lively scene, with insects hovering above, is in fact a daring composition, basically showing a vertical cross section through a body of water and the air above it, combining fauna and flora from below and above the water level.

Quite a number of Yuan fish jars are preserved, but they vary greatly in quality. The present piece appears to be the tallest and is among the best painted. While the jar in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, formerly in the Ataka collection, is arguably the most dramatic, with its overly large fish – three singles and a pair – nearly filling out the full height of the design band (Mikami Tsugio, Sekai tōji zenshū/Ceramic Art of the World, vol. 13: Ryō, Kin, Gen/Liao, Chin and Yüan Dynasties, Tokyo, 1981, pl. 56), the present jar is closest overall to a jar with cut-down neck from the collection of Sir Harry Garner, now in the Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo, included in the Mostra d’Arte Cinese/Exhibition of Chinese Art, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1954, cat. no. 613 (fig. 2); and one in the Palace Museum, Beijing, with a lotus scroll around the shoulder, in Gugong Bowuyuan cang wenwu zhenpin quanji. Qinghua youlihong/The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum. Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red, Shanghai, 2000, vol. 1, no. 5 (fig. 3). In its painting style it is also very similar to two jars that are lacking the borders above and below the pond scene, one in the Brooklyn Museum (Sherman E. Lee and Wai-kam Ho, Chinese Art under the Mongols: The Yüan Dynasty, 1279–1368, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1968, no. 155) and one exhibited at Eskenazi’s (Two Rare Chinese Porcelain Fish Jars of the 14th and 16th Centuries, Eskenazi, London, 2002, no. 1).

fig. 2. A blue and white 'fish' jar, Yuan dynasty © Tokyo Fuji Art Museum Image Archives / Dnpartcom

fig. 3. A blue and white 'fish' jar, Yuan dynasty © Palace Museum, Beijing

Fragments of fish jars have been discovered at the Luomaqiao kiln sites of Jingdezhen, see Weng Yanjun and Li Baoping, New Finds of Yuan Dynasty Blue-and-White Porcelain from the Luomaqiao Kiln Site, Jingdezhen: An Archaeological Approach, London, 2021, pl. 35, figs 4 and 5.

The power of the design proved irresistible even a century later, when potters working at the imperial kilns for the Xuande Emperor (1426-35) copied it, who otherwise rarely took Yuan designs as models. It can be seen quite similarly interpreted, for example, on a deep, lobed bowl of Xuande mark and period, sold in these rooms, 5th April 2017, lot 101 (fig. 4).

fig. 4. An Exceptionally Large, Fine And Important Blue And White Lobed 'Fish Pond' Bowl, Mark and Period of Xuande (1426-1435). Diameter 23 cm. Sold for 229 037 500 HKD at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 5th April 2017, lot 101. Photo: Sotheby's.

Blue and white porcelain in Sir Joseph Hotung's Study

Sotheby's. HOTUNG The Personal Collection of the late Sir Joseph Hotung: Part 1, Hong Kong, 8 October 2022