Page 20 - Youngman jade Collection Hong Kong March 3 2019 Sotheby's

In early Chinese art, animal motifs fall into two categories – naturalistic and highly stylised – but
in both cases, the artist always appears to have developed a close intimacy with the animals. The
representation of the animals may or may not reflect a religious usage or meaning, and investigations
into the meanings of those images can be enlightening. The animal motif may refer to a particular
category of imagined fantastic creatures, or to animals in the real world, but either way, it can be
regarded as a completely new configuration in Shang ritual art. When a jade animal was specially
designed and created, the intention was to provide a particular visual experience, and its significance
would have been understood by the viewer. When certain real animals are presented in a naturalistic
manner, the realistic features of the animals are explicitly played out, suggesting that the objects are
infused with an animated power, or they affirm what the viewer already knows about his relationship
with those animals. In Shang ancestral worship, domesticated animals including ox, sheep, dogs and
pigs were regularly sacrificed. Shang craftsmen were mesmerised by the charm of certain real animals
to make exceptional objects. In this way the animal-shaped vessels were perceived and treated more
like ‘sculptures’ than as utilitarian vessels.
In 1976, archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
discovered in Xiaotun village an intact royal tomb which belonged to Fu Hao, one of the consorts of
King Wu Ding. Amongst the large number of jade animals found in her tomb were representations of
buffaloes, including a large (7.7 cm long) jade buffalo carving, illustrated in Queen, Mother, General:
40th Anniversary of Excavating the Shang Tomb of Fu Hao, Beijing, 2016, p. 27 (1976AXTM5: 1301).
The current jade buffalo and the Fu Hao example, which it closely relates to, demonstrate the highly
stylised approach of the Shang artisan. Both are carved in the round from lustrous stone, and depicted
recumbent with legs spread, their stylised features sensitively rendered with skilful incisions, the
surface of both bodies covered with a design of raised-line square spirals. The overall representation is
highly abstract, with use of these scrolling geometric motifs to convey the archaistic design, but with
key features including the horns, eyes, nose and snarling expression naturalistically rendered.
Similar craftsmanship is evident on a Shang jade buffalo in Harvard Art Museum, illustrated in Max
Loehr and Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber, Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection
in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1975, cat. no. 148.
Outside of museum collections, however, it is extremely rare to find a complete jade sculpture of
a buffalo in Shang art. In contrast to the current buffalo, the majority of early jade depictions are
two-dimensional plaques. See for instance the jade water buffalo in the Mrs Edward Sonnenschein
Collection, Chicago, illustrated by Alfred Salmony, Carved Jade of Ancient China, 1938, pl. XXIII (8),
the example in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, illustrated by Jessica Rawson, ‘Animal Motifs in Early
Western Zhou Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections’ Chinese Bronzes: Selected articles from
Orientations, 1983-2000, Hong Kong, 2001, p. 20, fig. 12., and the small jade buffalo plaque from the
Harris collection, sold at Christie’s New York,16th March 2017, lot 802.
This superb jade buffalo encapsulates the Shang approach to jade craftsmanship and is an
extraordinary legacy of the era. Endowed with a prestigious history, originally in the collection of the
celebrated dealer C.T. Loo, and later in the collections of Frederick Mayer and the Idemitsu Museum,
Tokyo, in quality it ranks alongside the finest surviving examples from the royal tombs of Anyang.

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