Blue Shirt Battle
Imperial kilns, Jingdezhen, 1821-1850
Height: 6.32 cm
Mouth: .7 cm
Stopper: coral, carved as a twig
Provenance:
Charles V. Swain (no. 222)
Christie’s Interiors, 10 January 2009, lot 303
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd.
Famille rose enamels on colourless glaze on white porcelain; painted with a continuous riverscape scene with two covered boats, the larger with a sail, a flag and a crew of two, with two other men seated under its canopy drinking tea, one of them holding teapot and cup, the second, smaller boat, a covered skiff, with one man punting from the stern and another beating a drum on the prow with a post next to the sail on which a blue shirt has been raised to draw the arrows of two archers on a nearby rocky bank, where two other figures, a soldier with a flag inscribed 令ling (‘command’) and a scholar with a folding fan, with wisps of cloud separating the rocky bank from more distant mountain peaks adumbrated beyond, the foot inscribed in iron-red seal script 道光年製 Daoguang nian zhi (‘Made during the Daoguang period’), the interior unglazed.
