Rare powder blue glazed plate with a herdboy on a water buffalo

Description:

China, six-character mark Xuande in double ring at the bottom, Kangxi period
D. 26,7 cm
The inside of the shallow plate is decorated with a herdboy in copper red and underglaze blue, playing on a flute and sitting on the back of a water buffalo, all against a powder blue background. The back is decorated with two branches with red berries or flowers. Six-character mark in underglaze blue.
From old German diplomatic property, by descent to the present owners
A similarly decorated bowl is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and is illustrated in Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Chinese Ceramics in the Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: The Ming and Qing Dynasties, London, 1997, p. 127, no. 130. A blue and white bowl with Kangxi mark and a large depiction of Chang-E in the centre can be found in S. Marchant & Son, Exhibition of Seventeenth-Century Blue and White and Copper-Red and their Predecessors, London, 1997, p. 59, no. 48 - Very few tiny glaze chips to the rim, one small old overpainted glaze chip to the top of the rim, two hairlines to the rim