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Lot Essay
On the present meiping the Cizhou potters’ free and skillful painting style brilliantly conveys the convincing impression of the flow of the water. The lively painted decoration of fish amidst aquatic plants was likely inspired by contemporaneous paintings, such as the Northern Song handscroll, Luohua youyu tu, by Liu Ke, now in the Saint Louis Art Museum; a Southern Song album leaf attributed to Zhao Kexiong, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and a 13th century handscroll, Yule tu (The Pleasures of Fishes) by Zhou Dongqing. (Fig. 1) This subject recalls a famous passage from the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, in which Zhuangzi, strolling beside a river, observed, “See how the small fish come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!” His companion Huizi remarked, “You’re not a fish - how do you know what fish enjoy?” to which Zhuangzi replied, “You are not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”
Cizhou truncated meiping with a fish and aquatic plant design are extremely rare. A Cizhou truncated meiping of this type, with somewhat sketchily drawn fish between two horizontal bands of water plants on its upper body, is illustrated by Gakuji Hasebe in Sekai toji zenshu, Tokyo, 1977, vol. 12, Song dynasty, p. 237, no. 247. Another truncated meiping, decorated with various flower and butterfly motifs, is in the MOA Museum of Art, Atami, and is illustrated by Yutaka Mino in Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis, 1980, p. 198-99, pl. 87, where the author illustrates two further truncated meiping, one in the Tokyo National Museum (fig. 248), and the other in the Sano Museum (fig. 249). Compare, also, a Cizhou twin-handled jar decorated with similar fish and aquatic plants motif in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1980, no. 29.
Cizhou truncated meiping with a fish and aquatic plant design are extremely rare. A Cizhou truncated meiping of this type, with somewhat sketchily drawn fish between two horizontal bands of water plants on its upper body, is illustrated by Gakuji Hasebe in Sekai toji zenshu, Tokyo, 1977, vol. 12, Song dynasty, p. 237, no. 247. Another truncated meiping, decorated with various flower and butterfly motifs, is in the MOA Museum of Art, Atami, and is illustrated by Yutaka Mino in Freedom of Clay and Brush through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz'u-chou type Wares, 960-1600 A.D., Indianapolis, 1980, p. 198-99, pl. 87, where the author illustrates two further truncated meiping, one in the Tokyo National Museum (fig. 248), and the other in the Sano Museum (fig. 249). Compare, also, a Cizhou twin-handled jar decorated with similar fish and aquatic plants motif in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 10, Tokyo, 1980, no. 29.