Page 251 - 2019 September 11th Sotheby's Important Chinese Art

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A GOLD ‘TIGER AND DEER’ PLAQUE A number of late Warring States period Chinese Bronzes from Collections in Europe and
5TH - 3RD CENTURY BC gold openwork and repoussé plaques America, vol. 2, Osaka, 1933, pl. 127a.
featuring a tiger and its prey have been Harry Geoffrey Beasley was a Fellow of the
the gold sheet worked in repoussé with a tiger excavated, including one unearthed at Tianzi, Royal Anthropological Institute (England)
grasping a deer in its jaws, the tiger standing Liangchengdun County, Inner Mongolia, and and founded the Cranmore Ethnographical
foursquare, its stripes hammered in high relief now in the collection of the Inner Mongolia Museum.
and the fur neatly incised, the deer suspended Museum, Huhehaote, published in Zhongguo
by its neck, the body hanging limp and framed meishu quanji: Gongyi meishu bian 5, $ 10,000-15,000
by the side and lower borders of the plaque, the Qingtongqi, xia [Complete Series on Chinese
spaces between the animals’ limbs cut away Art: Arts and Crafts, vol. 5, Bronzes, Pt. 2],
Length 3¾ in., 9.5 cm Beijing, 1986, pl. 164; and another of the same 公元前五至三世紀 金透空鏨虎
date and in the same collection, published in
PROVENANCE
Zhang Jingming Zhongguo beifang caoyuan 噬鹿紋牌
Collection of Harry Geoffrey Beasley (1881- gudai jinyinqi [Ancient Gold and Silver Works
1939). from China’s Northern Steppe], Beijing, 2005, 來源
Collection of Alfred William Cowperthwaite pl. 26. See also a contemporaneous bronze Harry Geoffrey Beasley (1881-1939) 收藏
(1890-1964), acquired circa 1939, and thence example from the A. Stoclet Collection, Alfred William Cowperthwaite (1890-1964) 收
by descent. Brussels, published in Sueji Umehara, Shina- 藏，購於約1939年，此後家族傳承
kodo seikwa / Selected Relics of Ancient

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