A Chinese Famile-Verte 'Ladies' Rouleau Vase, Qing Dynasty, Kangxi Period

Brilliantly painted and enameled, the present vase depicts highborn ladies engaged in various leisurely pursuits. One, seated at a long table, looks at her reflection in an antique mirror while a maid styles her hair and a friend looks on, in front of a standing screen vibrantly decorated with roiling waves in fine iron-red lines and translucent green seafoam. They face out onto a balustrade inset with panels of crashing waves and floral and ruyi designs, with a pair of ladies fishing and looking down onto the river below and the mountainous landscape across. 

Although comparatively rare, related vases often feature women engaged in scholarly pursuits, making this leisurely scene exceptionally unique. As James Cahill observes, the motif of a woman looking at her fleeting reflection in a mirror relates closely to meiren paintings, female beauty, and its transience: "The compound image of woman-looking-into-mirror signifies woman's awareness of her own beauty, but also her concern over its impermanence" (see Cahill, "The Beauty's Face, Mirrors, and Illusionism; Conclusion," published on the author's website).

A closely related vase painted with women appreciating antiques, formerly in the Louvre Museum and now in the Musée Guimet, Paris (accession no. G.4797), is illustrated in J.J. Marquet de Vasselot and M.J. Ballot, Musée du Louvre: La Ceramique Chinoise, Paris, 1922, pl. 22a, and in detail in Michel Beurdeley and Guy Raindre, Qing Porcelain: Famille verte, Famille rose, London, 1987, pl. 55. A further example of women playing the qin is published in R.L. Hobson, The Later Ceramic Wares of China, New York, 1925. pl. XLV. 

For examples sold at auction, compare a vase with women engaged in games and music from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, sold at Christie's New York, June 23, 1983, lot 153. See two painted with ladies and the 'Four Accomplishments' from the collection of T.Y. Chao and sold in our Hong Kong rooms, November 18, 1986: the first formerly in the Mount Trust Collection, lot 123, the second exhibited at the 1908 Exhibition of Chinese Porcelain and Works of Art in Shanghai, lot 124. Compare another from the J.T. Tai Collection, also of the 'Four Accomplishments', sold in these rooms, March 22, 2011, lot 105. Finally, see a pair of vases with large panels each enclosing a lady at leisure in a garden, illustrated in Catalogue of the Collection of Old Chinese Porcelains formed by Richard Bennett, Esq., London, 1913, pl. 209.