Page 13 - Sotheby's Chinese Art and Porcelain Auction New York September 12, 2018

[him] photos of any nice pieces in monochromes or collections of early Buddhist stone sculpture ever
Þ nely decorated pieces of the Ching dynasty’, along assembled in the West.
with Ming pieces ‘in the Chinese taste’ such as ‘Þ ne By the early 1950s, Junkunc had amassed an
dainty bowls, stem cups, vases etc. of almost any impressive collection of Chinese works of art which
description, but not the clumsy types with poor color by then was largely securely stored in the museum-
and hurried drawings’. like environs of a subterranean bomb shelter in the
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor grounds of his home in Oak Park, Illinois. In a 1952
in 1941, the inventories of Yamanaka’s galleries in proÞ le in the Chicago Tribune, the bunker is described
America fell into the custody of the United States as storing a ‘priceless hoard’, with ‘shelves weighted
government, which dissolved the company, seizing with priceless pieces of Chinese art, prizes produced
and eventually selling o! much of its merchandise thru [sic] a span of centuries. A record of a nation in
through auctions held at the Parke-Bernet Galleries tapestry, bronze, jade, pottery, robes, and lacquer’.
in New York in May and June 1944. This same year The 1950s witnessed perhaps the most fervent
Hisazo Nagatani (d. 1994), the former manager of period of buying activity for Stephen Junkunc,
Yamanaka’s Chicago gallery, established himself as when he continued to make large acquisitions from
an independent dealer in Chicago under the company Nagatani and Frank Caro, the successor to C.T. Loo,
name Nagatani Inc. Nagatani continued to serve as as well as from Alice Boney in and Warren E. Cox
a consistent source of works for Junkunc for over in New York, and Barling of Mount Street Ltd., in
three decades, supplying by far the majority of the London. His purchases during this decade, which
works in the Junkunc Collection. During the 1940s, sometimes involved acquiring up to Þ fty works at
Junkunc appears to have broadened the scope of a time, appear to have concentrated primarily on
his collecting interests to focus on earlier material, early material, including a number of acquisitions
including Song to Ming ceramics, archaic bronzes of Buddhist sculpture, which consistently ranked
and – crucially – Buddhist sculpture. Aside from amongst his most expensive purchases. Junkunc
Nagatani, he purchased extensively from auction, continued purchasing and studying Chinese art until
particularly from New York’s Parke-Bernet Galleries, his death in 1978, whereupon the collection passed to
as well from Tonying & Company and C.T. Loo, both in his son Stephen Junkunc IV and has remained in the
New York. family collection.
In the January 1938 edition of the art magazine Throughout his lifetime, Stephen Junkunc III
Parnassus, Junkunc noticed an advertisement worked closely with and actively supported the
for John Sparks Ltd illustrating a limestone relief curators at American museums. He retained a long-
fragment from the Longmen caves showing a luohan standing relationship with the Art Institute of Chicago
holding a lotus blossom. Junkunc tore out and kept (AIC), repeatedly loaning works from his collection to
this advertisement in his Þ les. Fifteen years later, exhibitions through the 1940s-60s. Works from the
on 3rd March 1953, when his collecting activity was Junkunc Collection were also loaned to the seminal
very much focused on early Buddhist sculpture, Ming Blue and White exhibition at the Art Institute of
Junkunc wrote to Sparks reminding them of their Chicago, which traveled to the Philadelphia Museum
advertisement and requesting that should the of Art in 1949, and to the Arts of the T’ang exhibition
sculpture ever become available, to contact him at of 1956 at the Los Angeles Museum of History,
once. Regrettably, Junkunc never managed to secure Science and Art. Junkunc’s generosity towards
this spectacular fragment. It was sold at auction in American museums also extended to bequests, with
July 1970 to fellow Chicago-based collectors, James gifts from his collection now housed in the Milwaukee
and Marilyn Alsdorf, later sold by Eskenazi in London Public Museum, Wisconsin, and the Lowe Art
in 1978, and is today in the collection of the Cultural Museum, University of Miami, Florida, near his Coral
Relics Bureau in Beijing. Nonetheless, Junkunc Gables summer home.
continued undaunted to form one of the greatest

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