A famille-verte 'Romance of the Western Chamber' square bowl, Qing dynasty, Kangxi period | 清康熙 五彩西廂記人物故事圖倭角方盌

Marc Michot, Bruges, circa 2000.

European Private Collection.

馬克•蜜修特，布魯日，約2000年

歐洲私人收藏

90th Anniversary Exhibition. Qing Porcelain from Private Collections, Marchant, London, 2015, cat. no. 10.

《九十週年特展—私人收藏清代瓷器》，馬錢特，倫敦，2015年，編號10

The scenes of the present bowl are taken from the famous story of a secret love affair between the young scholar Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying, the daughter of a Tang dynasty minister. Originating in the Tang dynasty, the tale was adopted by Wang Shifu of the Yuan dynasty in the popular drama Xixiangji [Romance of the West Chamber], which became a major source of inspiration for scholars and artists during the 17th century.

The present bowl is an outstanding example of Kangxi imperial porcelain in which the craftsman has successfully captured the drama of the scenes taken from woodblock print illustrations of the story and rendered in a famille-verte palette. A sense of dynamism is captured through the use of outlines which have been drawn in swift yet fine strokes, and attention is cleverly drawn to the interactions between the figures. 

See a famille-verte bowl of closely related form, similarly painted with scenes from Xixiangji, exhibited in Stephen Little, Chinese Ceramics of the Transitional Period 1620-1683, New York, 1984, cat. no. 55 and sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 2nd June 2015, lot 3227. Compare a pair of bowls, also decorated with scenes from the novel, illustrated in Jeffrey P. Stamen, Cynthia Volk with Yibin Ni, A Culture Revealed, Kangxi-Era Chinese Porcelain from the Jie Rui Tang Collection, Bruges, 2017, cat. no. 12.