Lot 1151
Treasury 6, no. 1393 (‘Connubial Concert’)
HK$5,000

Colourless glaze on cobalt on porcelain; with a convex lip and recessed, slightly concave foot surrounded by a convex foot rim; painted under the glaze with a continuous garden scene with ornamental rocks, a bamboo trellis-fence, flowering peonies, and a pine tree with its upper branches swathed in clouds, beneath which a scholar sits at a stone table playing his qin, accompanied by two young women seated on rocks nearby, one playing a yueqin 月琴 (moon-shaped guitar), the other a flute; the foot, lip, inner neck, and interior glazed
Jingdezhen, 1840–1900
Height: 5.32 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.50/.99 cm
Stopper: glass, carved with a coiled chi dragon

Provenance:
Robert Kleiner (1998)

Published:
Robert Kleiner & Co.1998, no. 1
Treasury 6, no. 1393

Even though we are handicapped by knowing neither how many kilns produced blue-and-white bottles during the latter Qing period nor what differences in form, style, or colouring different kilns might have produced, there remains an irresistibly late-nineteenth-century quality to both the blue and the style of painting here. Dark contrasts are used, with sharp, rather unsubtle lines, and the appearance is visually harsher than earlier underglaze wares. Another with similar qualities is Sale 5, lot 127.

It is likely that the woman playing the stringed instrument, the one playing the end-blown flute, and the gentleman wearing the boldly patterned robe and the peculiar hat whilst playing the floor zither are all professional musicians. However, the zither’s tapered right end indicates that it might be a qin, more likely to be a scholarly amateur’s instrument of choice. Thus, we may be witnessing a lively private garden concert mixing professional musicians (who were often kept in wealthy households and considered as available for non-musical services) and an enthusiastic patron.

This is a miniature version of such bulbous ‘cylindrical’ bottles as Sale 2, lot 106 and Sale 6, lot 244, but only in the sense that it is much smaller than they are; it still does not constitute a miniature snuff bottle.

This is not the Sotheby’s sale catalogue. This is a product of Hugh Moss for the purposes of this website. For the catalogue details please refer to Sotheby’s website or request a copy of a printed sale catalogue from Sotheby’s.