A FAMILLE VERTE 'LADIES AND THE FOUR ARTS' VASE KangxiA FAMILLE VERTE 'LADIES AND THE FOUR ARTS' VASEKangxiOf elegant baluster shape, decorated around the exterior with ladies in a balustraded garden setting engaged in various pursuits including playing encirclement chess or weiqi, the seven-string zither or guqin and other musical instruments, and looking at a painted scroll representing both painting or hua and calligraphy or shu, all beneath a diaper-pattern band with shaped cartouches containing scroll, guqin in its cover, books and weiqi board and pieces, the neck decorated with boys playing with flowers. 44.5cm (17 1/2in) high. 清康熙 五彩仕女琴棋書畫圖觀音尊The present vase is notable for its lively enamelling style with the numerous ladies exquisitely detailed, their delicate features offset by richly patterned robes revealing their high cultural status and wealth. The vase is also particularly to be treasured for its subject matter, not only for its lively depiction of the Four Elegant Accomplishments of painting, calligraphy, playing the qin and playing weiqi, but in particular for its depiction of refined ladies enjoying these pursuits. The Four Elegant Accomplishments were codified as highly esteemed cultural activities suitable for the Chinese scholar gentleman, and it is was only from around the 16th and 17th centuries that women could engage in such activities.In later Imperial Chinese society, women were confined to the home and were not encouraged to be educated. During the late Ming dynasty however, against a background of social change and economic prosperity, some women managed to challenge these conventions. The famous late Ming philosopher Li Zhi (1527-1602) even declared in his ironically titled Book to be Burned that women were equally intelligent to men and took female students, much to general surprise. Celebrity courtesans accomplished in the genteel arts of music and literature entered male society, heralding a new model of feminine identity almost equal to the male literati. The present vase reflects this unusual emergence of accomplished females, and celebrates them as being knowledgeable and intellectually engaged, whilst still being refined, delicate and attractively feminine. See S.McCausland and Lizhong Ling, Telling Images of China: Narrative and Figure Paintings 15th-20th Century from the Shanghai Museum, London, 2010, pp.65-67.Another similar vase, also with ladies engaged in the Four Accomplishments, from The Salting Bequest but with a figure of Li Tieguai on the neck, is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, (acc.no.c.11246-1910). See also a related Kangxi vase depicting ladies engaged in the Four Elegant Accomplishments, in The Tsui Museum of Art: Chinese Ceramics IV, Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1995, no.93. Another example from the Grandidier collection in the Musée national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet is illustrated by M-C.Rey, Les Très Riches Heures de la Cour de Chine, Paris, 2006, no.35. Another smaller vase, but with a more restrained treatment of the ladies' pursuits, from the bequest of Benjamin Altman, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (acc.no.14.40.88).public_sentiment_keywords: Site+dynastyis_parse: 20230413image: yuzhan_bonhams_item/51930696.jpgsold_price_type: £