A Chinese famille verte biscuit cockerel. Kangxi

The cockerel finely modeled, standing rock work base with grass, the details of his plumage ridged, incised and splashed in colored glazes. Eyes, ears, comb and wattles are  left in biscuit.

Related works

For a very similar pair of cockerels, from the Anthony de Rothschild collection, see Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics: The Anthony de Rothschild collection, pp. 408/409, 1996, no. 231.

Two figures are published by William R. Sargent in The Copeland Collection: Chinese and Japanese Ceramic Figures, 2008, referring also two figures in the Waddesdon Collection. 

For a pair of figures, see Christie’s NYC, Chinese Export Art, 24 January 2005, lot 49.

A related model biscuit model is published by Howard & Ayers in China for the West: Chinese Porcelain and Other Decorative Arts for Export Illustrated from the Mottahedeh Collection, 1977, p. 582.

Notice

William Sargent noticed in The Copeland Collection that this figure represents the oldest purebred domestic fowl (commonly identified as Asia game cocks) of a train developed as fighting cocks. Cock fights were known to have been popular in China as early as the first millenium B.C.