Page 277 - Sothebys HK Dragon Emperor April 2024

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PROPERTY FROM THE DE AN TANG COLLECTION 清乾隆 白玉耕織圖山子
A FINELY CARVED WHITE AND RUSSET JADE
‘GENGZHI TU’ BOULDER, 來源：
QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG PERIOD Bluett & Sons，倫敦
倫敦蘇富比2000年6月7日，編號58
18.1 cm
展覽：
PROVENANCE 《玉緣：德安堂藏玉》，永壽宮，故宮博物院，
Bluett & Sons, London. 北京，2004年，編號32
Sotheby’s London, 7th June 2000, lot 58.
EXHIBITED
A Romance with Jade: From the De An Tang Collection,
Yongshougong, Palace Museum, Beijing, 2004, cat. no. 32.

HK$ 700,000-1,000,000
US$ 89,500-128,000

This impressive jade boulder is remarkable for not only the The more typical motifs for jade boulders are scholars
meticulously executed carving, but also the vivid depiction of appreciating waterfalls and immortals appearing in fanciful
an agricultural scene, the likes of which are relatively rarely landscapes. Although jade examples of this design are rare,
seen on jade mountains, but were popular at the Qing (1644- there is a celadon jade boulder of similar size to the present
1911) court. piece but sculpted horizontally, carved with a boy riding on
Originally compiled by the Southern Song (1127-1279) a water buffalo approaching a thatched hut in which a lady
official Lou Shou in 1145, the Gengzhi tu / Pictures of Tilling is working at a loom, all against a backdrop of rocks with a
and Weaving is an illustration of the different stages of stream rushing beneath a bridge in the foreground, sold at
agriculture and sericulture, used as reference material Sotheby’s London, 8th December 1992, lot 83, and again at
to farming. It was also conceived as a metaphor for a Christie’s Hong Kong, 23rd March 1993, lot 960.
prosperous, ordered society under a magnanimous and Compare also scenes of Gengzhi tu produced during the
benevolent ruler. In the Qing dynasty, this was further Qianlong period but in a different medium: a porcelain
developed into an important subject to glorify the golden age version of the album preserved in the Palace Museum,
under the justified governance of the Manchus. The Kangxi Beijing, illustrated in Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong: Qing
Emperor (1662-1722) commissioned a painted version that Porcelain from the Palace Museum Collection, Hong Kong,
became very famous and served as the blueprint for most 1989, p. 418, pl. 100; a doucai moon flask in the Tianjin
later illustrations of the theme, Yuzhi gengzhi tu of 1696, Municipal Museum, illustrated in Porcelain from the Tianjin
preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing. The Qianlong Municipal Museum, Hong Kong, 1993, pl. 176; and a blue-
Emperor (1736-95) commissioned another version of this and-white moon flask in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
series of illustrations accompanied by his own poems, and (accession no. 49.2015), included in the Museum’s exhibition
in 1769 also the carving of the scenes on forty-eight stone Masterpieces of Chinese Porcelain, Baltimore, 1980-1.
slabs. These steles were then erected in the Yuanmingyuan
summer palace; many of which are now destroyed, but two
scrolls with ink rubbings of the scenes are known.

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