Lot 79
Rare and Large Export Blue and White ‘Three Musicians’ Plate, Kangxi Period, circa 1683-1700
Lot 79 Details
Rare and Large Export Blue and White ‘Three Musicians’ Plate, Kangxi Period, circa 1683-1700
Supported on a short tapering foot, and well-potted with a shallow rounded cavetto and wide flaring rim, the interior completed in underglaze blue with eight dense landscape scenes reserved along the outer border and surrounding a central scene of three musicians in a garden and dressed in Western-style court clothing while playing instruments including a flute, lute, and dulcimer
diameter 13.1" — 33.2 cm.
Estimate $8,000-$12,000
Note:
After a Nicholas Bonnart engraving titled Symphonie du tympanum, du luth et de la flute d'Allemagne, which bore a verse lauding the joys of music when all play on time, and noting how even sweeter it is when l'Amour conducts. As M.A. Pinto de Matos notes, this same subject has also been found on tiles in Holland, and these dishes were likely for the Dutch market (The RA Collection of Chinese Ceramics, vol. II, London, 2011, pp. 250-1, no. 332). Another was in the Mottahedeh collection, illustrated by Howard & Ayers, China for the West, vol. I, no. 35a, and sold at Sotheby's New York, October 19, 2000, lot 93.