Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

A RARE CHINESE YELLOW-GLAZED 'FU SHOU' EWER AND COVER
KANGXI 1662-1722

The flattened body moulded as a combined character of fu and shou, applied with a loop handle and a slender tapering spout, the cover surmounted by a blue-glazed Buddhist lion finial, 26.3cm. (2)

Provenance: from the collection of William Cleverley Alexander (1840-1916), purchased from W. Dickinson & Son, 2nd July 1907 for £45, a copy of the invoice is available.

Cf. The Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. C.1263-1910 for a related Kangxi winepot in the shape of a shou character in yellow enamels from the Salting Bequest.

清康熙 黃釉福壽紋獅鈕執壺
來源：威廉·克萊爾利·亞歷山大（1840-1916）收藏，1907年7月2日以£45的價格購於W.Dickinson & Son（附發票復印件）。

William Cleverley Alexander (1840-1916) was one of the most noted connoisseurs of his day. He was an accomplished draughtsman, a member of the Burlington Fine Arts Club and a founding member of the National Art Collections Fund, and was renowned for his taste in Western paintings and Asian works of art. This acclaim was noted in William Alexander's obituary written in 1916 by the British artist and critic Roger Fry who noted the remarkable good taste which guided Alexander’s acquisition of the pieces in his collection. The collection was started in 1867 and included items from the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties. He loaned items from his collection to a number of important exhibitions, including the Burlington Arts Club exhibitions in 1895, 1896 and 1910, and the ground-breaking exhibition of Chinese Applied Art held at the City of Manchester Art Gallery in 1913. He was also an early patron of James McNeill Whistler. A large portion of his collection of Chinese ceramics collection was sold by Alexander's daughters at Sotheby's in 1931 and an important Yuan dynasty gourd-shaped vase was sold in these rooms in 2005. For further details about The Alexander Collection see Hobson, Rackham and King, Chinese Ceramics in Private Collections, where 58 pieces from the collection are illustrated.