The dragon motif in Far Eastern porcelain: Towards attribution problems

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of a typical Chinese figurative motif — a dragon, in porcelain objects of the Ming and Qing dynasties and in works of Japanese ceramic art of the Meiji era. The approach to the study of decorative and applied art from the point of view of the motive has been repeatedly tested by the author when compiling typological series of antique motifs in the decorative and applied art of Russian classicism. The novelty of this article is that for the first time more than fifty Chinese and Japanese objects with dragons dating from the 14th — early 20th centuries originating from the National Museum of Chine, the Shanghai and Nanjing Museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum in Tokyo, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the State Hermitage Museum, as well as from several private collections. The following features were compared: posture, body position, color scheme, the nature of the background, as well as whether the dragon image is single or paired, the painting is made underglaze or overglaze, in the form of a flat or relief image. The early stage of the 14th–16th centuries it does not allow us to find prototypes of dragon images in the past, but still the author has collected certain information about cases of reflection of the dragon theme in Chinese cultural monuments. The objects of the 18th and, especially, the 19th centuries serve as a good material to find in the art of the bygone eras of the Celestial Empire the previous artistic interpretations of dragons. In the final part of the article, an overview of dragon images in Japanese ceramic art is presented, the reasons for the migration of this motif caused by the victory of Japan, as a competitor, in the Far Eastern porcelain market are substantiated.