Page 18 - Fine Chinese Art Christies London May 2018

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION (LOTS 38-43)

*38
A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, GU
LATE SHANG DYNASTY, ANYANG PERIOD (12TH-11TH CENTURY BC)
The mid-section and spreading lower body of the slender vessel are crisply
decorated with taotie masks set against a leiwen ground and separated by
scored vertical fanges. There are bird motifs on the narrow upper register
of the lower body, and four blades of stylised cicada design rising from the
mid-section, decorating the faring neck. The interior of the foot is cast with a
single graph. The surface has a mottled pale greyish-green patina with areas
of malachite encrustation.
11æ in. (29.8 cm.) high
£10,000-15,000 $15,000-21,000
€12,000-17,000

PROVENANCE
With Rare Art, Inc., New York, before 4 June 1975.
From an important private European collection.

The interior of the foot is cast with a single graph of unknown reading,
although it is likely to be a personal name. Two early Western Zhou bronze
vessels bearing similar graphs are illustrated by Wang Tao and Liu Yu in
A Selection of Early Chinese Bronzes with Inscriptions from Sotheby’s and
Christie’s Sales, Shanghai, 2007, nos. 257 and 258, sold by Sotheby’s in 1988
and 1981 respectively.
Compare with a gu of similar form and decoration in the Freer Gallery of Art,
illustrated in The Freer Chinese Bronzes, Washington, 1967, vol. I, pp. 58-63,
no. 8. A gu illustrated by R. Bagley also features similar fanged taotie, leiwen
and cicada ornamentation (see R. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur
M. Sackler Collections, Washington D.C. and Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1987, pp. 240-241, no.33. )

Another example is illustrated in J.J. Lally & Co. Chinese Archaic Bronzes:
The Collection of Daniel Shapiro, New York, 2014, pp. 14-15, no. 3.

晚商安陽 青銅饕餮蕉葉紋觚

來源:
於1975年6月4日前購自美國紐約古董商Rare Art，Inc
重要歐洲私人珍藏

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16 Other fees apply in addition to the hammer price – see Section D of our Conditions of Sale at the back of this Catalogue