Page 424 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Chinese Art

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PROPERTY FROM A HONG KONG PRIVATE 清十八世紀 白玉雕雙臥馬
FAMILY COLLECTION 《乾隆年製》款

A WHITE JADE CARVING OF TWO 來源：
HORSES 香港佳士得1996年4月28日，編號9
QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

the substantial stone deftly fashioned in the
round, depicting two cuddling horses, one with
its head turned backwards staring at another
lying adjacent to it, each detailed with gentle eyes
of almond shape and well-groomed mane, their
bodies elegantly curved with the muscular legs
tucked underneath their bodies and tails curled
alongside their hind haunches, the stone of an
opaque milky-white tone with traces of reddish
russet veining, inscribed to the underside with a
four-character Qianlong seal mark
16 cm, 6¼ in.

PROVENANCE
Christie’s Hong Kong, 28th April 1996, lot 9.

HK$ 800,000-1,200,000
US$ 103,000-154,000

Skilfully fashioned in the round, this carving of 102, together with a pair of larger pale celadon
two jade horses is notable for the portrait-quality examples, cat. no. 101; another in the British
in which they have been sensitively rendered. Museum, London, illustrated in Jessica Rawson,
Their gentle smiling features and full rounded Chinese Jade. From the Neolithic to the Qing,
body have been endowed with individuality London, 1995, pl. 16:20; and a third from the H.
through the jade stone from which it has been Tutein Nolthenius collection, was included in
fashioned. For another rare carving of two horses, the exhibition Oosterse Schatten – 4000 Jaar
see the example from the collection of Lolo Aziatische Kunst, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
Sarnoff, sold in our New York rooms, 17th/18th 1954, cat. no. 84. See also a much larger example
March 2017, lot 324. in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, illustrated
in James C.S. Lin, The Immortal Stone. Chinese
For jade carvings of individual horses, see a Jades from the Neolithic Period to the Twentieth
larger horse from the collection of Sir John Woolf, Century, London, 2009, pl. 39.
included in the exhibition The Woolf Collection of
Chinese Jade, Sotheby’s, London, 2013, cat. no.

422 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比