A blue and white 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' rouleau vase, Qing dynasty, Kangxi period | 清康熙 青花三國演義人物故事圖棒槌瓶

Collection of Weetman Dickinson Pearson (1856-1927).

Marchant, London.

來源：

Weetman Dickinson Pearson (1856-1927) 收藏

馬錢特，倫敦

Recent Acquisitions. Important Chinese Porcelain from Private Collections, Marchant, London, 2012, cat. no. 14.

Kangxi Underglaze Blue and Copper-Red, Marchant, London, 2016, cat. no. 22.

來源：

《近期入藏：私人收藏重要中國瓷器》，馬錢特，倫敦，2012年，編號14

《康熙青花釉裏紅》，馬錢特，倫敦，2016年，編號22

Based on the 14th-century novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the present vase is finely painted depicting warriors fiercely charging ahead on horseback amidst a rocky landscape. Set in the turbulent years of the end of the Han dynasty, the novel gained immense popularity during the Ming dynasty due to the wide circulation of woodblock prints that were produced for the novel. As such, it was also a frequent motif on porcelains of the late Ming and early Qing periods.

See a closely related blue and white rouleau vase, similarly decorated with bands to the neck but decorated with a difference scene from the novel, in the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, illustrated in Kangxi Porcelain Wares from the Shanghai Museum Collection, Shanghai, 1998, pl. 11. Another famille-verte vase, included in the exhibition Famille Verte: Chinese Porcelain in Green Enamels, Groninger Museum, Schoten, 2011, cat. no. 79, is depicted with a similar scene, where warriors on horseback are engaged in battle.

Weetman Dickinson Pearson (1856-1927), created 1st Viscount Cowdray in 1917, was highly active in a variety of pursuits, most notably as an oil industrialist and owner of the Pearson Conglomerate, a liberal M.P. for Colchester (1895-1910), President of the Airboard (1917-18) and a keen philanthropist. In 1914 the American ambassador in London remarked that ‘Cowdray could have owned Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia’ due to the extraordinary wealth he built up though his business projects, notably the Blackwell Tunnel in London and tunnels under the East River in New York, as well as his discovery of one of the world’s largest oil fields, the Potrero del Llano in Mexico. In 1909 Lord Cowdray purchased Dunecht House, a stately mansion which presides over a great Scottish estate in Gothic and Italian splendor to the west of the city of Aberdeen. He employed Ashton Webb to aggrandize the house and the large spaces were filled with décor and furnishing suited to the sumptuous style of the early 20th century, which included 16th and 17th century chimney pieces, inlaid paneling and Chinese porcelain.