Page 202 - 2019 September 13th Christie's New York Important Chinese Works of Art

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION
920
A RARE LARGE CARVED RED LACQUER HU-SHAPED VASE
19TH CENTURY
Each side of the robust body is carved in high relief with an ovoid panel The present vase is remarkably light in weight for its size, suggesting that
depicting a gathering of scholars in a mountainous retreat, on one side two the skeletal material is likely to be cloth rather than a heavier material such
are seen playing weiqi while others converse in an open pavilion, and on the as metal or wood. The carving is unusually deep and crisp and the design
reverse several study a scroll painting, within petal borders reserved on a especially complex. While carved red lacquer vessel of hu form of this
dense ground of foliate scroll interspersed with bats and archaistic dragon massive size and with such dense carved decoration appears to be quite
scrolls, all between bands of stylized cicadas at the mouth rim and above rare, similar decoration could be found on vessels of other forms. A brush
foliate scroll on the foot. The handles are in the form of foliate-scroll dragons. pot in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, carved from equally thick
18Ω in. (47 cm.) high, Japanese wood box lacquer with scholars and attendants within gardens, is illustrated in Hai-wai
yi-chen (Chinese Art in Overseas Collections - Lacquerware), Taipei, 1987, p.
166, no. 163. Another bottle vase with medallions carved around the body
$50,000-70,000
enclosing fgures in landscapes reserved on a dense foral ground from the
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, is illustrated in ibid., p. 169, no. 166. For
PROVENANCE two smaller carved dark red lacquer hu decorated with fgural scenes around
Taisho Emperor (r. 1912-1926) Collection (according to inscription on box). the body, see Christie’s New York, 24 March 2004, lot 14 and 21 September
Prime Minister of Japan, Tsuyoshi Inukai (1855-1932) Collection (according to 2004, lot 83.
inscription on box). 清十九世紀 剔紅開光山水人物圖螭龍耳尊
Christie’s New York, 19 March 2008, lot 350.

(another view with box)
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