Page 127 - Chinese Works of Art Chritie's Mar. 22-23 2018

J.M. Hu with his collection, 1960s.

A Selection of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art

From the Collection of J.M. Hu

(Lots 794-813)

he collection of J.M. Hu represents a lifetime’s dedication to J.M. Hu’s collection of Chinese ceramics provided abundant opportunity for
Tconnoisseurship and beauty. Across more than half a century, J.M. Hu personal scholarship and historical investigation. As early as the 1940s, he
acquired an exceptional grouping of Chinese ceramics that illuminated the longed for a welcoming social environment where like-minded collectors
rich history of China and its people. In both his personal collection and in his could share and discuss art and objects. Two decades later, he established
bequests to cultural institutions, J.M. Hu stood as a model of the modern the Min Chiu Society in Hong Kong alongside fellow collectors K.P. Chen
scholar-collector. and J.S. Lee. A noted cultural philanthropist, J.M. Hu gifted substantial
groupings from his collection to the Shanghai Museum in 1950 and 1989;
Hu Hui Chun was born in 1911 in Beijing; in later years, he changed his given many of these objects remain on view in the museum’s Zande Lou Gallery.
name to Jen Mou. The eldest son of the infuential banker Hu Chun, J.M. Hu The collector also arranged to have his family’s set of imperial zitan furniture
was raised in an elegant private residence amongst his many stepbrothers and sent to the National Palace Museum in Taipei for display, and returned the
stepsisters. In keeping with tradition, he was given a rigorous background in important Siming version of the Huashan Temple stele rubbing to the Palace
the Chinese classics; more unusually, this was supplemented by a Western- Museum, Beijing.
style education, as well. He frst encountered Chinese ceramics during his
In addition to the following works of art, a selection of paintings from the J.M.
student years, when he purchased a nineteenth-century brush-washer for
Hu Collection will be ofered in our Fine Chinese Paintings sale on 20 March
his desk. This initial foray into collecting would become emblematic of J.M.
2018, lots 124-125.
Hu’s poignant relationship with art: even amidst the upheavals of war and the
evolution of his collection, the modest brush-washer stayed with him until his
death in 1995. J.M. Hu’s boyhood studies within the Chinese literati tradition
greatly informed his philosophical approach to life and collecting: humble and
erudite, he consistently afirmed that it was the visceral connection between a
collector and his acquisitions that was of essential importance. True value, in
J.M. Hu’s estimation, lay far beyond monetary worth.
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