A pair of yellow-ground green-enameled 'Boys' bowls, Yongzheng Marks And Period. Photo Sotheby's
each with deep rounded sides rising from a straight foot to a flared rim, finely incised with eight boys playing various musical instruments within a balustraded garden beneath pine trees, with overlapping lappets at the foot and a border of flower designs at the rim, the design picked out in brilliant apple-green enamel against a yellow ground, six-character marks in underglaze blue within double circles. Diameter 6 in., 15.2 cm. Estimation 250,000 — 350,000 USD
Provenance: Hirano Kotoken, Osaka.
Acquired in Japan, 1990.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 5th October 2011, lot 2126.
Exposition: Hirano Kotoken honten shinchiku kinen: Chugoku kotoji ten, Osaka, 1990, cat. no. 61.
The theme of boys performing and playing musical instruments in a garden on ceramics represents a traditional motif developed over a thousand years and was favored on account of its implied wish for the prosperity of male offspring. According to Terese Tse Bartholomew, 'One Hundred children: From Boys to Play to Icons of Good Fortune', Children in Chinese Art, Honolulu, 2002, the height of the development of this motif for porcelain decor occurred during the Jiajing and Wanli periods when there was an increase of the production of wares with this theme. See one in the Baur collection illustrated in John Ayers, The Baur Collection Geneva. Chinese Ceramics, vol. 2, no. A166.
A closely related bowl is illustrated in Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, London, 1994, vol. 2, pl. 895; one is included in Chinese Porcelain. The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection, Hong Kong, 1987, pl. 103; and a pair is published in John Ayers, ibid. vol. 4, 1972, nos. A540 and A541. See also three bowls sold in these rooms, one from the Hall Family Collection, 2nd May 2000, lot 535, another, 9th October 2007, lot 1610, and the third, 8th October 2008, lot 2511.
Sotheby's. Fine Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art. New York | 18 Mar 2014, 10:30 AM - www.sothebys.com