Lot 28: AN UNUSUALLY LARGE CARVED PORCELAIN BRUSHPOT BY CHEN GUOZHI, QING DYNASTY, DAOGUANG PERIOD

AN UNUSUALLY LARGE CARVED PORCELAIN BRUSHPOT BY CHEN GUOZHI, QING DYNASTY, DAOGUANG PERIOD

BY CHEN GUOZHI, QING DYNASTY, DAOGUANG PERIOD

measurements note
15cm., 5 7/8 in.

robustly potted in the form of a section of bamboo, carved in varying relief with a mountainous landscape scene in which a scholar, attendant and dog approach a boy seated in a boat moored nearby, leaving a fenced garden pavilion where two scholars are engaged in conversation, outside the garden fence a water buffalo reclines beneath two towering pines and overhanging bamboo, the base with a square seal in positive seal script, flanked by two inscriptions carved in kaishu script

Quantity: 1

PROVENANCE

Christie's Hong Kong, 19th March 1990, lot 433.

NOTE

The inscription on the base reads and translates as follows:
Puquan zhenwan
Xianyuan Chen Guozhi zuo
Rare curios of Puquan
Made by Chen Guozhi of Xianyuan

The seal reads and translates as follows:
Shan gao shui chang
The mountain is high, the river is long.

Chen Guozhi, along with Wang Bingying and Li Yucheng, were ceramic artists at Jingdezhen during the early nineteenth century, who individually crafted and signed carved porcelains, often imitating wood, ivory and bamboo. During the first half of the nineteenth century the distinction between artists and craftsmen began to dissolve, encouraging fine artists like Chen to assume artistic pretensions of identification and dating to match their undoubted skills at potting and carving.

Compare similar examples signed by Chen, including a white-glazed biscuit brushpot depicting figures and water-buffalo in landscape, illustrated in Escape from the Dusty World: Chinese Paintings and Literati Works of Art, London, 1999, cat.no. 95; a light turquoise-glazed example, illustrated in John Ayers, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, vol. 2, Geneva, 1999, pl. 340; as well as a small box and cover included in the exhibition In Scholar's Taste, Sydney L. Moss, Ltd., London, 1983, no. 103.