Page 411 - Bonhams Chinese Art London May 2013

381
A rare hexafoil ‘farming’ cinnabar lacquer
box and cover
Qianlong
The cover deeply and crisply carved with a
complex scene of two farmers planting rice
shoots in a watery paddy field beside a mill
under a thatched roof, a boy riding a goat
beside a river and another farmer setting out
with a hoe accompanied by a boy carrying a
basket in the distance, all surrounded a key-fret
border, the sides of the box and cover neatly
carved with hexagon motifs, the base and
interior lacquered black.
18.2cm (7 1/8in) diam. (2).
£10,000 - 15,000
HK$120,000 - 180,000
CNY94,000 - 140,000

清乾隆 剔紅人物故事圖葵瓣形蓋盒

The present box and cover is remarkable in its
fine craftsmanship and rare in its presentation
of one of the Four Noble Occuptions, namely,
Scholar, Farmer, Fisherman and Wood Cutter.
The box depicts the occupation of the farmer,
therefore indicating that this box would have
been possibly part of a set of four boxes.

The inclusion of farming as one of the Four
Noble Occupations reflects its importance to
society in pre-industrial China. Indeed the
peasant was seen as crucial to the ideal of a
wealthy, prosperous agricultural economy, and
enjoyed a status second only to the scholar-
official in the Confucian hierarchy. This led to
the romantic idealising of the pastoral idyll
in artistic production, ignoring the grinding
realities of hard agricultural labour. In a highly
unorthodox move, even Prince Yinzhen, the
future Yongzheng Emperor, was depicted in
humble farming roles in a painting entitled
‘Pictures of Tilling and Weaving Portraying
Yinzhen’; see E.S.Rawski and J.Rawson (eds.),
China: The Three Emperors 1662-1795,
London, 2005, p.242, fig.60.

Two Views
Fine Chinese Art | 407