Lot 1147
Treasury 6, no. 1412 (‘Children of all Ages’)
HK$27,500

Famille rose enamels on colourless glaze on porcelain; with a wide mouth, convex lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a convex foot rim; painted with a continuous scene of four children and two old men, one being assaulted by the boys, who have knocked his hat on the ground and are now pulling his beard and going after the fish he had been carrying in two baskets suspended from a shoulder pole, the other old man, dressed more formally and wearing spectacles, pointing an accusing finger at them, with inscriptions reading Qishisan 七十三(‘Seventy-three’) near his right shoulder, Bashisi 八十四 (‘Eighty-four’) near the head of the aged victim of the boys, Taoqi’er 啕氣兒(‘Naughty boy’) over his left shoulder, near a boy striking him from behind, and Waimao’er 歪毛兒(‘Messy-haired boy’) over the head of the boy reaching into a fish basket between the two elders; the foot inscribed in iron-red regular script Yiyang tang zhi 頤養堂製 (‘Made for the Hall of Nurture and Protection’); the lip painted with gold enamel, the inner neck and interior glazed
1860–1920
Height: 7.22 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.70/1.26 cm
Stopper: gilt-metal, chased with a formalized floral design with integral finial and collar; Lorenz Denney, 2004

Provenance:
Montreal auction, 10 October 2004
Robert Hall, January 2005

Published:
Treasury 6, no. 1412

The ages of seventy-three and eighty-four were both critical mileposts, supposedly because they were the years attained by Confucius and Mencius, respectively, and it is hard to outdo those two. Thus, a common saying is ‘Seventy-three, eighty-four: Yama [the king of the underworld] sends no invitation but you go on your own.’ In Henan province, living carp were served to an old man who turned seventy-three or eighty-four in the belief that this would help him overleap the fateful period. Perhaps the presence of the fish on this bottle reflects that custom, but certainly the troublemakers are doing their best to upset it!

A different reading of the bottle can be deduced from the fact that that ‘seventy-three, eighty-four’ sometimes refers to incoherent babbling: the bottle could be a humorous celebration of chaos among the naughty young and the doddering old. However, the name on the bottom of this bottle, Yiyang tang, is one used by pharmacies or homes for the aged in the second half of the twentieth century and there must be precedents for this, although we have not been able to identify them. If this bottle was commissioned by such an establishment, it should represent a more serious wish for progeny and long life in abundance (yu 餘, conventionally evoked by the fish, yu 魚).

An identical bottle from the same series bearing the same hall name is in Geng 1992, no. 191. It is assigned a Republican date, the period between 1912 and 1949. Certainly the extremely high quality of the enamels and the excellent painting here would not preclude such a late date, but the same subject exists in underglaze versions that appear to be from the late Qing period (Hugh Moss Records), suggesting that the subject may have been popular earlier. One or both of these enamelled versions may be pre-Republican. Enamelling on porcelain recovered quickly from the deprivations of the Taiping Rebellion in the 1850s and 1860s, and work of this quality was common enough from then on.

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.