8 – M5279
Description
Chinese imperial porcelain famille verte birthday dish, pan, with flat everted lipped rim, painted in the centre with Lady Magu standing holding a scroll looking back at her attendant with a large peach, beside a tethered mythical deer drawing a wheeled square jardinière supporting a fruiting lingzhi group, encircled by twenty iron-red flowerheads on a hexagonal diaper ground between four-character medallions, wan shou wu jiang, “endless longevity”.
The base with a six-character mark of Kangxi within a double ring in underglaze blue and of the period, 1662-1722.
9 ⅞ inches, 25.2 cm diameter.
Provenance & Additional Information
- From the collection of Dr. Wou Kiuan (1910-1997).
- Wou Lien-Pai Museum, collection no. Q.3.21.
- Sold by Christie’s London in their auction of Fine Oriental Ceramics and Works of Art, 2nd March 1970, lot 105, p. 39, illustration opposite p. 40.
- Illustrated by Rose Kerr in Chinese Antiquities from the Wou Kiuan Collection Wou Lien-Pai Museum, Hong Kong, 2011, pl. 133.
- Sold by Sotheby’s New York in their auction of A Journey through China’s History, The Wou Kiuan Collection, Part I, 22nd March 2022, lot 20, pp. 66/7, where it notes, “the present dish is a rare example of a group of finely potted and painted ‘birthday dishes’, featuring auspicious themes of longevity, made at the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen, most likely to commemorate the Kangxi Emperor’s (r. 1662-1722) sixtieth birthday in 1713”.
- Another, of this subject matter and large size is illustrated by Li Yi-hua in Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, 1989, 52, p. 69; a further example of similar large size, with Lady Magu holding a sceptre, her attendant holding a root wood staff with pendant lingzhi and with a deer drawing a vessel with lotus leaf cover, is illustrated by Yang Boda in The Tsui Museum of Art, Chinese Ceramics IV, Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1995, no. 102.
- Six different birthday dishes of this large size, including one of similar design, were sold by Christie’s London in Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, 12th December 1977, lot 198-lot 203, 55/6, colour page, and are illustrated by Anthony du Boulay in Christie’s Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, London, 1984, p. 227, no. 2.
- Lady Magu, known as the Goddess of Longevity, is the female equivalent of Shoulao and is also often depicted with a deer, peach and lingzhi, all further symbols of She has the ability to brew “longevity wine” from lingzhi, the fungus of immortality. On this dish, she is possibly on the way to attend the birthday banquet of the Queen Mother of the West. This subject matter in its entirety forms the rebus Magu xianshou, “Magu offering longevity”.
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