Page 103 - Sotheby's Asia Week March 2024 Chinee Art

The skill and precision with which the figures and landscape
are so intricately picked out on these panels points to them
being a product of the Imperial palace workshops. The
meticulous use of the materials and the distinct European-
style of perspective is reminiscent of Jesuit court paintings,
and European-subject enamel plaques known to have been
created in the palace workshops.
It is possible that the panels were originally enclosed
within a screen. See the completely preserved soapstone-
inlaid zitan and hardwood screen from the collection of
John Wanamaker, Philadelphia, sold at Christie’s Hong
Kong, 7th July 2003, lot 592. The collector and writer
John Wanamaker wrote in A Notable Carved and Painted
Twelve-Fold Chinese Screen of the Late Seventeenth and
Early Eighteenth Centuries From the Imperial Palace in
Pekin, New York and Philadelphia, 1928, that the screen
was ‘made as a gift from a Premier to an Emperor’. Dated
to 1696, bearing the inscription ‘Painted by Yu Zhiding
of Guangling’, the screen encloses six Chinese-subject
scenes, including two closely related to the current
scenes, and six Western-subject screens.
For an individual panel sold at auction, see a panel
depicting Europeans in a landscape, marginally larger
(41 by 46 cm), sold at Christie’s New York, 24th-25th
March 2011, lot 1405. See also a pair of panels from the Q
collection, sold at Bonhams Hong Kong, 25th May 2011, lot
275. These precisely match the current pair in style, size
and the style of the wood frames, suggesting these were
part of the same set. For European-subject enamel panels
with similar treatment of perspective as the present
examples, see an enamel plaque included in the exhibition
Chinese Painted Enamels, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,
1978, cat. no. 118, and sold in our Monte Carlo rooms,
23rd June 1986, lot 1169; and another from the collection
of Hermann von Mandl of Vienna, sold in our Hong Kong
rooms, 30th October 2002, lot 206.
The perspective of the panels is captivating, drawing in
the viewer. The first panel depicts an immortal holding
a ruyi scepter and riding on a buffalo being surrounded
by attendants, one of which is carrying a peach as a gift,
possibly for the Queen Mother of the West pictured in the
second panel. The Queen Mother of West descents on cloud
scrolls, holding a vase and looking intently to the side while
her attendants bow and present her with further gifts.

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