Page 274 - Sotheby's Important Chinese Art, Sept. 21-22, 2-21, NYC

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A PALE CELADON JADE CARVED TABLE EXHIBITED Prior to the Qianlong Emperor’s reign, sizeable table screens idyllic moments in nature. Compare a similar table screen
SCREEN The Yangtze River Collection: Later Chinese Jades, Museum were seldom made of jade due to the inaccessibility of in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, included in the
QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG PERIOD of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1993, cat. no. 60. large-scale boulders. With the Qing territorial expansion museum’s exhibition The Refined Taste of the Emperor.
into western China in the mid-18th century, there was an Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch’ing
of vertical rectangular form, skillfully carved in several layers $ 150,000-200,000 increased supply of jade material from Xinjiang province, Court, Taipei, 1997, cat. no. 72; another of slightly larger
of relief on one side with Shoulao standing beneath a gnarled particularly from the renowned jade-rich region of Khotan size originally from the collection of Mary Porter Walsh,
pine tree within a dramatic mountainous landscape of steep 清乾隆 青白玉雕壽星獻瑞圖硯屏 (Hetian). Highly skilled jade artisans worked at workshops exhibited in A Romance With Jade from the De An Tang
cliffs and ravines, the deity holding a long staff in one hand both inside and outside of the palace, for example, in cities Collection, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2004, cat. no. 67; and
and a peach in the other, escorted by his two acolytes and 來源： such as Suzhou and Yangzhou, creating a wide range of a third in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, illustrated in
walking up a vertiginous path towards a small pavilion, jade items of unprecedented size and quantity. These James C.S. Lin, The Immortal Stone. Chinese Jades form the
the reverse carved with a deer hopping towards its mate Helga Wall-Apelt 醫生收藏 translucent stones were carefully chosen by the craftsmen Neolithic Period to the Twentieth Century, London, 2009, pl.
grazing on the grassy slopes by a waterfall amidst a similar 展覽： to enhance the carved pictorial scenes when light shone 87. See also a pair of similar white jade table screens, sold
landscape, all under swirling misty clouds, the stone an even 《The Yangtze River Collection: Later Chinese Jades》 through. The carver’s ingenuity is evident in the screen’s in our Hong Kong rooms, 1st May 1996, lot 683. Compare
white tone suffused with cloudy and light russet inclusions, impeccable details and skillful incorporation of the stone’s two spinach-green jade table screens with similar scenes of
wood stand (2) ，Museum of Fine Arts，聖彼得堡，佛羅里達，1993 natural inclusions into the composition, as seen in the carved figures walking up a mountainous landscape to a pavilion
Height 8½ in., 21.6 cm 年，編號60 rockwork on one side and the flowing water on the other. above, one sold in Christie’s Hong Kong, 1st April 1992, lot
Considered as paintings in stone, jade table screens usually 1202, the other sold in our London rooms, 10th December
PROVENANCE 1991, lot 91.
depict scenes from classical literature, Daoist themes, and
Collection of Dr. Helga Wall-Apelt.

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