A BLUE AND WHITE ‘SIXTEEN BOYS’ BOWL, DAOGUANG MARK AND PERIOD, PUBLISHED AND EXHIBITED, EX WEISHAUPT COLLECTION

Published:
1. Gunhild Avitabile, From the Dragon's Treasure: Chinese Porcelain from the 19th and 20th centuries in the Weishaupt Collection, London, 1987, no. 98.
2. Feng-Chun Ma, Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, May 2017, no. 24.
3. Feng-Chun Ma, A Thousand Years of a Hundred Boys in Chinese Art, Hong Kong, 2024, p. 144-145, no. 44.

Exhibited: Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt, Germany, From the Dragon's Treasure: Chinese Porcelain from the 19th and 20th centuries in the Weishaupt Collection, 1987.

Qing archival records: An entry in the ‘Gongdang Jindan’ (Tribute List), dated to the eighth day of the fifteenth year of the Daoguang reign (corresponding to 1835), records: “Respectfully presented by De Shun [...] (place to the eastern building of the Shende Tang), twenty large bowls with the 'sixteen boys' motif, and twenty medium bowls with the 'sixteen boys' motif [...]”. The present lot most likely corresponds to one of the mentioned bowls listed in this document.

China, 1821-1850. Well potted with deep rounded sides supported on a straight foot and rising to a gently flaring rim, the exterior decorated in inky shades of cobalt blue with a continuous scene of boys at play in a garden landscape, separated in two groups with eight younger boys dressed in dudou (aprons) standing around a table with an artificial watercourse on top, and a second group of eight older boys forming a procession, wearing loose robes, and holding instruments such as cymbals, a laba (long trumpet), parasol, a gong, and wooden sticks, the images divided by a zig-zag fence and auspicious plants.

The recessed base with an underglaze-blue six-character seal mark da Qing Daoguang nianzhi and of the period.

Provenance: The Weishaupt Collection, no. 575 (label to base), Berlin, Germany. The Feng-Chun Ma Collection, Netherlands, acquired from the above. The base with a label from Feng-Chun Ma Chinese & Japanese Art and another inscribed ‘44’. Georg Weishaupt (1906-2004) was a German businessman and an important collector of Chinese porcelain. Over a period of approximately thirty years, he assembled an impressive collection of around 900 pieces of East Asian porcelain, portions of which were regularly exhibited in museums across Germany from the 1970s through the 1990s. His collection focused primarily on porcelain dating from the late 18th century until the founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911. Weishaupt was among the first collectors in Germany to devote himself to this previously underappreciated field and published numerous books and exhibition catalogs. Much of his collection is now housed in the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin. Feng-Chun Ma is a distinguished scholar, collector, and dealer of Chinese art with more than thirty-five years of experience. Born in the Netherlands to Chinese parents, she was influenced early on by her father’s efforts to promote Chinese culture in Europe. Her professional career in the Asian art world began in 1982 at Christie’s Amsterdam, after which she served as Head of the Chinese and Japanese Department at Sotheby’s Amsterdam, before establishing her own dealership, Feng-Chun Ma Chinese & Japanese Art, in 2003. Over the course of her career, she has assembled a renowned private collection centered on the motif of ‘boys at play’ (yingxitu), comprising rare and well-provenanced works ranging from Song dynasty ceramics to Ming and Qing porcelain, jade, bronzes, snuff bottles, and textiles, reflecting both her scholarly insight and connoisseurship.
Condition: Good condition with only minimal wear and firing irregularities. Three very minor flakes to rim. Prospective bidders are invited to request additional video documentation captured under strong backlight conditions prior to bidding.

Weight: 296.4 g
Dimensions: Diameter 15.4 cm

Gunhild Avitabile, in From the Dragon's Treasure: Chinese Porcelain from the 19th and 20th centuries in the Weishaupt Collection, no. 98, proposes that the boys are depicted imitating a scholarly pastime inspired by the famous poetry contest at Lanting (the Orchid Pavilion). At this gathering, participants sat along a winding stream as wine cups floated past; when a cup reached a participant, he was required to compose a poem, and failure to do so resulted in the obligation to empty the cup.

The ‘boys at play’ motif draws upon Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian traditions. Its roots lie in Buddhist imagery, where the Buddha’s birth from the calyx of a lotus flower gave rise to the enduring image of a boy holding a lotus. By the Tang dynasty, representations of children had entered secular art, reaching particular prominence in the Song dynasty through Su Hanchen’s celebrated paintings of idealized children at play. From the Yongle reign (1402-1424) onward, this imagery coalesced into the ‘hundred boys’ theme (baizitu), inspired by the Zhou dynasty legend of King Wu, who fathered ninety-nine sons and adopted another to complete the auspicious number of one hundred.

Expert’s note:
This animated ‘boys at play’ subject can be traced to Song dynasty prototypes and is closely related to a group of bowls generally attributed to the Chenghua period (1465-1487). Compare two Chenghua mark and period bowls with the ‘children at play’ subject, in the National Palace Museum Collection, Taipei, accession number故瓷003143N000000000 and 故瓷003142N000000000.

Literature comparison:
Compare a closely related blue and white bowl depicting the same subject, also with a Daoguang mark and of the period, 15.2 cm diameter, in the Gardiner Museum, object number, G01.2.100, and another in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, accession number 2022.73.10. Further closely related Daoguang-marked bowls are held by the Shanghai Museum, accession number CI00016395, and the Guangdong Museum, accession number 148920.

Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Sotheby’s London, 6 November 2024, lot 18
Price: GBP 48,000 or approx. EUR 57,500 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A fine and rare blue and white 'hundred boys' bowl, Seal mark and period of Qianlong
Expert remark: Compare the closely related subject and size. Note the Qianlong mark.