American Art Collaborative

This vase is representative of trends in porcelain decoration during the reign of the Kangxi emperor, the second ruler of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). The traumatic events connected to the fall of the Ming dynasty and the rise of the Manchu Qing led to a decline in imperial patronage during the latter part of the 17th century; in response, the potters of Jingdezhen, the imperial kiln, began producing wares designed to appeal to a new clientele of literati-gentry and wealthy merchants who emulated their lifestyles. Julia B. Curtis, in a 1995 catalogue, noted three major innovations in porcelain decoration as a result: scenes resembling landscape painting, auspicious motifs relating to scholars and success in the imperial exams, and narrative scenes borrowed from woodblock print illustrations of fiction and drama. The scenes on this vase incorporate all three, with the strongest influence clearly being woodblock illustrations. The plots of traditional works of fiction and drama are often summarized in a parallel couplet that serves as either introduction or conclusion. The two scenes on this vase represent an interesting visual riff on this narrative technique. Both the top and bottom scenes can be divided into three sections, with top and bottom paralleling each other—trees growing in a garden (fig. 1); human figures in a garden (fig. 2); and, contiguous and open to the garden, an interior of a scholar’s study. In both the top and bottom sections in figure 1, a stone path leads to two gnarled trees intertwined against a background of a rock formation. However, the lower picture is framed by an arch, which leads to an incense table, and on the other side of the tree and stone formation the garden is bounded by a balustrade. In all three parallel sections the bottom setting is similar to, but more elaborate than, the one above. Perhaps they show the same garden at two different times, the top before and the bottom after the owner has experienced an upturn in fortune. The other component scenes support this conjecture.In the top garden scene an immortal descending from heaven—indicated by the cloud formations on which he stands—is raining down coins from a money string onto a servant, who is gathering up the windfall. Moving to the interior scene we see three men dressed in scholars’ clothing happily watching. The three have their backs to an incense table, behind which is hung a scroll depicting the very same immortal. The incense burner on the table suggests that they have been honoring the immortal and are being rewarded for their piety. If the top interior scene evokes one fantasy of the scholar-official class—wealth raining down from the sky, untainted by crass mercantilism—the interior scene on the bottom part of the vase indicates another. Here three men are depicted receiving formal greetings from fellow scholars and a military man in full regalia; in the contiguous garden scene another scholar hurries to join them. The three men’s clothing, the deference they receive from the others, the writing implements spread before them, and the sumptuous decorations of the room imply the power and privilege of the scholar-official class. Perhaps this vase originally graced a study very similar to the ones depicted on it; it surely served as both auspicious emblem and idealized depiction of the hopes and aesthetic values of the members of the literati-gentry.Kimberly A. Besio