Page 14 - Robert Youngman Collection Of Chinese Jade March 2019 Sotheby's

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A PALE CELADON JADE ‘HORSE AND MONKEY’ GROUP
QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY
carved as a recumbent horse, the mane falling in fine waves down both sides of the neck, the tail to one side, the head turned backwards to look
at a small monkey clambering up the hind quarters, clasping the end of the bridle, the striated stone a milky celadon with white mottling and faint
caramel veining

清十八世紀 青白玉雕馬上封侯把件
Length 3¼ in., 8.2 cm
$ 4,000-6,000

PROVENANCE 來源
Deqingshuwu Collection. 德馨書屋收藏
Christie’s Hong Kong, 26th April 2004, lot 1216. 香港佳士得2004年4月26日，編號1216
J. J. Lally & Co., New York, 29th June 2004. J. J. Lally & Co.，紐約，2004年6月29日

Such a carving would have been presented to an aspiring official, as the depiction of a monkey atop a horse forms the rebus Ma shang feng
hou, conveying the wish for a speedy promotion. Additionally, as Terese Tse Bartholomew notes in Hidden Meanings: Symbolism in Chinese
Art, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, 2006, p. 118, the combination of a monkey with a horse also stems from an ancient
Indian belief that monkeys could prevent horses from falling ill, as seen in early agricultural guidebooks such as Han E’s Essential Sishi
zuanyao/Notes for the Four Seasons and Li Shizhen’s Compendium of Bencao gangmu/Materia Medica.
Compare a related horse and monkey group sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 3rd December 1976, lot 728. A similar carving but with a patch
of russet, sold twice in our Hong Kong rooms, first on 21st May 1987, lot 653, and again, 18th May 1989, lot 824. A larger example sold in
these rooms 22nd September 2005, lot 351. See also one illustrated in Robert Kleiner, Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and Simone
Hartman, New York, 1996, pl. 184, and later sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 27th November 2007, lot 1556.

12 SOTHEBY’S