Each modelled as a standing figure of a smiling youth carrying a smaller boy on his back, both turned toward one another in lively interaction. The elder figure is dressed in long robes decorated with floral designs on a yellow ground, further adorned with the rank badge of a high-ranking civil official. The child wears a shorter jacket with aubergine ground and floral decoration. The bases are left unglazed.
A pair of famille-verte biscuit-glazed piggyback boys
Description
Qing dynasty, Kangxi period (1662-1722
Dimensions: 24.7 cm high
Provenance:
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Collection, New York (KH.FG.SM.1-2)
The Tibor Collection
Each modelled as a standing figure of a smiling youth carrying a smaller boy on his back, both turned toward one another in lively interaction. The elder figure is dressed in long robes decorated with floral designs on a yellow ground, further adorned with the rank badge of a high-ranking civil official. The child wears a shorter jacket with aubergine ground and floral decoration. The bases are left unglazed.
Groups of this type belong to a popular category of Kangxi biscuit porcelain figures, notable for their lively modelling and bright famille-verte palette. The imagery of boys at play conveys auspicious wishes for fertility, prosperity, and continuation of the family line.
Compare a related example in the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, illustrated by Anthony du Boulay in The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, It’s History and Collections, Vol. II, pp. 620-621. A further example, formerly in the Eumorfopoulos and Copeland collections, was illustrated by William R. Sargent in The Copeland Collection, Chinese and Japanese Ceramic Figures, The Peabody Museum of Salem, no. 47, p. 103; another is illustrated by Frank Partridge and Sons Ltd. in their exhibition of A Collection of Old Chinese Porcelain, Summer 1933, no. 53.
