Lot 18F
China, Qing Dynasty, ca. 1644 to 1912 CE. A shallow plate with a fully glazed body and a maker's mark on the base. The interior of the plate is painted with an sexual scene that conforms to Qing understandings of the erotic and may have been intended as instructional or as a sexual aid. It shows a man and woman on a bed, the man naked and in the active position while the woman lies with her head propped up and her clothing pulled up around her waist. There is a high level of detail, both on the figures and on their bedroom scene. Size: 6.55" W x 1.05" H (16.6 cm x 2.7 cm)
Imagery like this tells us a lot about gender roles and the history of sexuality in the Qing period. Depictions of women from this time show them in passive positions - there are many examples of them painted or sculpted as reclining, using a pillow to prop up their heads. Men, meanwhile, are shown in active roles. Historian Craig Clunas argues that representations of women in Qing art were often linked to pleasure: "as the object of male regard, as the locus of fantasies about interiority and access to hidden places, as the passive bodies in a discourse of the erotic". To this end, the scene here is set in a bedroom - almost certainly the woman's bedroom. Erotic literature was popular during this time period and the Ming period before it, at least with the upper classes, and we know from studying that literature that the woman's bedroom was the idealized place for sexual activity, often well described and appointed with symbolic decorations that encouraged sexual intimacy.
Provenance: Ex- Private Singapore collection
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#117897
- Condition: Intact, artwork very clear.
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