DIMENSIONS

Height: 17 inches

​

PROVENANCE

• Edward T. Chow Collection

• Private Collection, Hawaii

• Christie's New York, March 20, 1997, lot 135

• Christie's Hong Kong, May 1, 2000, lot 727

 

CATALOGUE NOTES

Finely enameled in vivid colors and gilded to depict a continuous battle scene with warriors on horsebacks all within a mountainous landscape, the shoulder painted with panels of various Buddhist Emblems reserved on a floral and green scroll ground below the neck decorated with a scene of a fisherman in a mountain river landscape. The present vase is remarkable for its excellent quality of painting.

This scene is probably inspired by woodblock prints taken from the popular Chinese classical novel Sanguozhi Yanyi, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which recalls the collapse of the Eastern Han dynasty when China splintered into separate states battling for political supremacy. It recounts the efforts of a member of the Han imperial house, Liu Bei, who heroically attempted to reunite a divided country. Liu Bei formed an alliance with Guan Yu (later deified as Guandi, the Daoist god of war) and together they fought ageist Cao Cao, the ruler of the state of Wei who seized control of north China.