Page 104 - 2019 September 9th Bonhams Important Chinese Works of Art

PROPERTY OF VARIOUS OWNERS
896
ANONYMOUS Here the four boys play with exquisitely crafted and rendered toy
Children at Play in a Garden, 15th century boats. The children are depicted wearing sumptuous textiles, fine
Ink and color on silk, laid on to board and framed. shoes and gold wrist bangles, indicative of their noble--if not imperial--
52 1/8 x 34 3/4in (132.5 x 88.2cm) status. The garden furnishings, including a massive porcelain jardeniere
and finely carved marble basin, further establishes the high privilege
$10,000 - 15,000 of their environs. The elaborately carved balustrade functions as an
important element of the composition, but also alludes to the fact
that the young boys are literally ‘fenced in’ and contained within their
佚名 嬰戲圖 設色絹本 鏡框 十五世紀 luxurious setting.

Large compositions of children--and almost exclusively boys--at play A very similar composition of young boys playing with boats in a
in a garden setting (yingxitu 嬰戲圖) were produced under the aegis of garden is in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei and
the Ming dynasty imperial painting academy. Inspired by thematically illustrated in Ku-kung Shu-hua T’u-lu 故宮書畫圖錄, Taipei, 1989, vol
similar, but smaller fan paintings and album leaves produced by the 3, p. 257.
Song Dynasty imperial painting academy, this theme was revived in
the early Ming, generally associated with the court painter Lv Wenying
(1421- after 1505).
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