Asian Art at Marchant

A Chinese porcelain famille verte, wucai, brush pot, bitong, painted with three panels of Fuxing, the god of happiness, standing on a rocky promontory, holding a scroll and looking up at an iron-red bat in flight, beside overhanging rockwork; Luxing, the god of wealth, standing and holding up a gilt hu-tablet beside fencing and rockwork and beneath cloud scrolls and the sun; Kuixing, the god of examinations, standing on one leg on the head of a dragon fish emerging from crested waves while holding a brush in one hand and a bushel-measure in the other, his scantly clad torso with a large green ribbon and wearing gilt rings on his ankles, beside a small stack of books, all on an elaborate seed green ground with daisies, lotus, morning glory, prunus, hibiscus, tree peony and bamboo sprays above four clusters of ripe peaches, the foot, rim and interior glazed white, the base with unglazed wide band and recessed glazed centre.

5 5/8 inches, 14.4 cm high; 4 5/8 inches, 10.8 cm diameter.

Kangxi, circa 1700.

Chinese porcelain ko-akai, wucai, dish of flower form, with foliate rim, painted with a scholar and his attendant crossing  a bridge in a river landscape scene, the scholar carrying a staff while the attendant carries a wrapped qin, all beneath iron-red clouds and the sun with an overhanging flowering tree, heightened in green, yellow, aubergine and iron-red enamels with underglaze blue, all beneath a brown-dressed rim.

The base with a four-character mark fu tian xia taiping, ‘happiness and universal peace’, within a double square and a single ring in underglaze blue, the base also with chatter marks within the unglazed foot.

21cm diameter

Tianqi to Chongzhen, Circa 1629

A Chinese porcelain famille verte rectangular tea caddy and cover, painted with lotus leaves, flower-heads, aquatic plants and a rhizome, beneath iron-red insects in flight the reverse with flowering chrysanthemum, pierced rockwork with a butterfly and insects in flight, the two shorter sides each with flowering branches of morning glory, the shoulder with aster flowers, branches and rockwork, all the panels outlined with a green glazed frame and supported on four raised bracket feet, the cover with peony and camellia.

Kangxi, circa 1700.

4 5/8 inches, 11.7cm high