Famille Verte - exhibitions international

In China, at the end of the 12th century, a certain Dong Jieyuan
wrote a book in which he compiled existing text variants of
popular theatrical plays, romances and ballads recounting
a well-known love story. It was published as the Xixiangji
zhugongdiaoi (The Story of the Western Wing in All Keys and
Modes). In turn, this book was adapted and expanded by
Wang Shifu (c. 1250–1300), a playwright, who published
it as a comedy play in eight books, called the Xixiangji (The
Romance of the Western Chamber). Although the Xixiangji
entered the realm of classical Chinese literature, the story
itself remained immensely popular among all classes in China.
Even as recently as the 1980s Peking opera companies still
staged performances, movies were made and even comics
used the theme. Without exaggeration it can be stated that
the Xixiangji is an essential part of China’s oral, literary and
theatrical heritage. 1
Because the story was so popular in China, the most
important scenes became conventionalised images and were
easily recognised by the general public. Woodblock illustrations
in the many editions also concentrated on core scenes, thus
creating a corpus of motifs that was widely used by painters,
silk embroiderers, lacquer workers and other craftsmen.
Porcelain, too, was often decorated with episodes from The
Western Chamber, although depicting the scenes on rounded
surfaces (vases, pots) or centralised in a circle (dishes, plates)
required compositional skills that were quite different from
those of the woodblock carvers. 2 According to Clunas, the first,
rare examples in underglaze blue occur in the 14th and early
16th centuries, 3 but porcelain painted with scenes depicting
episodes from The Western Chamber, in underglaze blue as
well as in enamels, only became a widespread fashion in the
Shunzhi period (1644–61). These porcelains heralded its
popularity on Kangxi (1662–1722) famille verte wares when
wares with these depictions were not only produced for the
domestic Chinese market but were also exported to Europe.
Even though Europeans did not understand the cultural context
of the decorations, they still regarded such wares as interesting
and exotic.
It has been suggested that the porcelain painters copied
directly from woodblock engravings in books or from single
sheet prints for The Western Chamber scenes. This is
disputable because quite often the painted episodes contain
mistakes, confusing, for example, the main characters or
the paraphernalia that make them recognisable. Perhaps
the porcelain painter, being illiterate, used images on other
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media, but he must surely have had a general idea of the
characters and the succession of the scenes, as is evident on
the enamelled famille verte bowl and matching dish in the
Groningen Museum (cat. 94). Though not exactly precise, the
romance is told in a series of 24 panels in three bands that
follow each other like a modern comic, depicting the essential
scenes in the proper sequence. Such an extensive depiction of a
story like this is very rare; 4 pieces with four (bowls), six or eight
scenes (vases, pots) are more prevalent. Although we have no
information on the original production orders, it is possible that,
for instance, several bowls were painted with different scenes,
creating a series depicting the complete story. Of course, such
series were scattered after a while and we are fortunate if we
still have two matching pieces (cats. 84, 85). Usually, only a
single scene was painted in the centre of dishes and plates,
although a few more could sometimes be added in small border
panels. Bowls of a normal size sometimes display more scenes
in panels on the outside, but rarely more than six. In such
cases, series of several dishes or bowls with successive scenes
might initially have been made.
Emperor Kangxi (r. 1662–1722) effectively suppressed the
Ming rebellions around 1683 and the porcelain industry in
Jingdezhen could begin anew. Porcelain decorations with
hidden political messages and allusions to the ‘good old Ming
times’ were unwelcome and new sources for decorations had
to be found. 5 Besides a more formal style, figural scenes
were continued, if only to meet the demand from the rapidly
growing group of Western customers. The ‘innocent’ (although
in Chinese eyes rather sexy) Romance of the Western Chamber
proved to be an ideal source of motifs and seems to have been
more popular than any other theatrical scenes or literary stories.
Strangely, its popularity as a porcelain decoration quickly
disappeared after the reign of Kangxi and only few examples
from the Yongzheng (r. 1723–35) and Qianlong (r. 1736–95)
periods are known.
The ‘boy meets girl’ love story takes place during the Tang
dynasty (618–907), when it was first recorded (see note 1), and
can be condensed as follows:
Book 1. The bright but impoverished student Zhang Junrui (or
Zhang Gong) is travelling with his servant to the capital to sit
his examinations and they stop for the night at a monastery
outside the walls of the city of Puzhou. While he is being shown
around he encounters the beautiful Cui Yingying (‘Oriole’ in