Important Chinese Art
Important Chinese Art
A pale celadon jade carved table screen, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period | 清乾隆 青白玉雕壽星獻瑞圖硯屏
Auction Closed
September 22, 04:06 PM GMT
Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
A pale celadon jade carved table screen
Qing dynasty, Qianlong period
清乾隆 青白玉雕壽星獻瑞圖硯屏
of vertical rectangular form, skillfully carved in several layers of relief on one side with Shoulao standing beneath a gnarled pine tree within a dramatic mountainous landscape of steep cliffs and ravines, the deity holding a long staff in one hand and a peach in the other, escorted by his two acolytes and walking up a vertiginous path towards a small pavilion, the reverse carved with a deer hopping towards its mate grazing on the grassy slopes by a waterfall amidst a similar landscape, all under swirling misty clouds, the stone an even white tone suffused with cloudy and light russet inclusions, wood stand (2)
Height 8½ in., 21.6 cm
Collection of Dr. Helga Wall-Apelt.
來源
Helga Wall-Apelt 醫生收藏
Prior to the Qianlong Emperor's reign, sizeable table screens were seldom made of jade due to the inaccessibility of large-scale boulders. With the Qing territorial expansion into western China in the mid-18th century, there was an increased supply of jade material from Xinjiang province, particularly from the renowned jade-rich region of Khotan (Hetian). Highly skilled jade artisans worked at workshops both inside and outside of the palace, for example, in cities such as Suzhou and Yangzhou, creating a wide range of jade items of unprecedented size and quantity. These translucent stones were carefully chosen by the craftsmen to enhance the carved pictorial scenes when light shone through. The carver's ingenuity is evident in the screen's impeccable details and skillful incorporation of the stone’s natural inclusions into the composition, as seen in the carved rockwork on one side and the flowing water on the other.
Considered as paintings in stone, jade table screens usually depict scenes from classical literature, Daoist themes, and idyllic moments in nature. Compare a similar table screen in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the museum’s exhibition The Refined Taste of the Emperor. Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch’ing Court, Taipei, 1997, cat. no. 72; another of slightly larger size originally from the collection of Mary Porter Walsh, exhibited in A Romance With Jade from the De An Tang Collection, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2004, cat. no. 67; and a third in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, illustrated in James C.S. Lin, The Immortal Stone. Chinese Jades form the Neolithic Period to the Twentieth Century, London, 2009, pl. 87. See also a pair of similar white jade table screens, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 1st May 1996, lot 683. Compare two spinach-green jade table screens with similar scenes of figures walking up a mountainous landscape to a pavilion above, one sold in Christie's Hong Kong, 1st April 1992, lot 1202, the other sold in our London rooms, 10th December 1991, lot 91.