M3897
Description
Chinese porcelain blue and white and underglaze copper-red basin painted on the interior with a large praying mantis on rockwork, beneath branches of prunus with a butterfly in flight above large leaves painted with a light blue wash, bamboo and daisy, all encircled within a double ring, the cavetto painted with flowering chrysanthemum and peony beneath prunus branches on the flat everted rim, the underside supported by a wide foot rim.
14 1/4 inches, 36.2 cm diameter.
Early Kangxi, circa 1670-1673.
Condition
One tiny rim nibble, foot chip restored.
Provenance & Additional Information
- Purchased from Marchant, London, 28th May 1985.
- Sold by Christie’s, New York, in their auction An Era of Inspiration, 17th Century Chinese Porcelains from the Collection of Julia and John Curtis, 16th March 2015, lot. 3580.
- A similar basin, in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art at the British Museum, with figural decoration and an inscription on the base ‘made in the Xinhai year of the Kangxi reign (1671) for the Hall of Chinese Concord’, is illustrated by Rosemary Scott in Elegant Form and Harmonious Decoration: Four Dynasties of Jingdezhen Porcelain, 1992, no. 110, p. 105, collection no. PDF 653; another with figural decoration, is illustrated in Blue and White Porcelain with Underglazed Red (III), The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Beijing, 2000, no. 191, p. 209; a further example, purchased for Gordon Morrill at Sotheby’s, London, in their auction Fine Chinese Ceramics, Archaic Bronzes and Works of Art, 27th November 1973, lot. 272, was later sold by Bluett’s in June 1986 and is now in the Museum of Far Eastern Art, Stockholm, illustrated in colour by Roy Davids & Dominic Jellinek in Provenance, Collectors, Dealers & Scholars: Chinese Ceramics in Britain & America, pl. 117, p. 331; another painted with landscape from the Butler Family Collection, is illustrated by Antony White, Chen Xiejun & Wang Qingzheng in Seventeenth Century Jingdezhen Porcelain from the Shanghai Museum and the Butler Collections, 75, pp. 224-225.
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