A large blue and white 'ladies in garden' jar, guan


16th century The heavily-potted vessel of shouldered hexagonal form with gently rounded sides and a short neck, finely painted with six ogival panels depicting garden scenes with court ladies engaging in various leisurely pursuits, set between stylised floral scrolls, above a band of palmettes reserved on a blue ground, the shoulder with a diaper band enclosing shaped panels with qilin and tripod incense burners, the neck with a further diaper band containing panels decorated with flower heads. 34cm (13 3/8in)high.
|十六世紀 青花開光庭園仕女圖大罐The present lot is rare for its size, and decoration of roundels with ladies. The designs are possibly taken from woodblock prints of popular stories that proliferated in the late Ming period and reflect an era of social change and economic prosperity. The famous late Ming philosopher Li Zhi 李贄 (1527-1602) even declared in his ironically titled Book to be Burned (焚書) that women were equally intelligent to men and took female students, much to general surprise. Celebrity courtesans accomplished in the genteel arts of music and literature entered male society, heralding a new model of feminine identity almost equal to the male literati. The present jar reflects this interest in accomplished females, and celebrates them as being refined. See S.McCausland and Lizhong Ling, Telling Images of China: Narrative and Figure Paintings 15th-20th Century from the Shanghai Museum, London, 2010, pp.65-67.