Page 199 - Important Chinese Art Hong Kong April 2, 2019 Sotheby's

Fig. 2
Sixteen-panel jade-embellished wooden screen, Qing dynasty, 42nd year of the Qianlong period (1777), detail
Qing court collection
© Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing
圖二
清乾隆四十二年（1777年） 硬木嵌玉十六羅漢像屏 局部 清宮舊藏
© 北京故宮博物院藏品

The 8th Arhat Kanakabharadvaja a copy of Guanxiu’s colophon recording the shuhua tulu/Illustrated Catalog of Chinese
making of the luohan paintings between 880 Painting in the National Palace Museum, vol.
For the five aggregates and six
consciousnesses, actuality and illusion, and 895 AD – in addition to a longer postscript 13, Taipei, 1994, pp. 183-214, two of them
on the last panel written by the Qianlong
similarities and differences, he just raises Emperor (ibid., pp. 216-232). For a detailed later included the museum exhibition The All
Complete Qianlong: The Aesthetic Tastes of the
a single finger, though he’s not that fellow
Tianlong. He dwells amidst trees and rocks, discussion on this screen, see Luo Wenhua, Qing Emperor Gaozong, Taipei, 2013, cat. nos
and hair sprouts from his hands and feet. ‘Screen Paintings of Guanxiu’s Sixteen Arhats III-1.18 (the 11th Arhat) and III-1.19 (the 16th
Why not trim them? But who would trim a in the Collection of the Palace Museum’, Arhat), together with a related jade boulder with
Orientations, vol. 4, no. 6, September 2010, pp.
the 11th Arhat, cat. no. III-1.16.
wild boar or deer?
104-110.
In the 29th year of Qianlong’s reign See also a jade book in the Chester Beatty For table screens similarly decorated with an
imperial inscription and inlaid with jichimu and
(corresponding to 1764), the head abbot at
the Shengyin Si monastery, Master Mingshui, library, Dublin, portraying sixteen luohan ivory, see an example depicting five hundred
instructed local stone engravers to copy the with accompanying inscriptions, illustrated arhats, preserved in the Palace Museum,
sixteen portraits, incising Guanxiu’s lines as well in William Watson, Chinese Jade Books in the Beijing and published in The Complete
Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum.
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, 1963, pls 6-7
as the Emperor’s calligraphy and seals onto
sixteen large flat stones that were embedded (object no. C1007). A pair of carved polychrome Bamboo, Wood, Ivory and Rhinoceros Horn
into the sixteen sides of the marble Miaoxiang panels, each depicting eight luohan with their Carvings, Hong Kong, 2002, no. 196, and
Pagoda, now preserved in Temple of Confucius attributes and the corresponding imperial text, another with jade, ivory and jichimu inlays on a
blue lacquered background, no. 192.
was sold at Sotheby’s, one in London on 4th
in Hangzhou. In the 42nd year (corresponding
to 1777), the Shandong military governor Guotai November 2009, lot 123, from the collection Several three-panel screens from the Qing
presented to the Qianlong Emperor a screen of Lieutenant colonel Arthur Bowdich Cottell court collection are still preserved in the
of sixteen panels, each depicting a luohan and the other in Hong Kong, 3rd April 2018, Palace Museum, Beijing, but are quite different
lot 3626. Despite the difference in materials
based on the Miaoxiang marble stele version from our present screen in terms of form and
of Guanxiu’s paintings, complemented by the and compositions, the iconography of the technique. A zitan and jichimu example from
same imperial inscription inlaid with jade (fig. respective luohan on the above examples is the Qianlong period is included in The Complete
2). According to the Qing court archives, the closely related to that of the present screen. Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum.
screen was installed in Yunguanglou (Building The set of paintings reputed to be by Guanxiu, Furniture of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (II),
of Luminous Clouds) in the Qianlong Garden was unfortunately lost during the turbulent Shanghai, 2002, no. 201, together with another
and is now in the Palace Museum, Beijing, years of the late Qing dynasty. The copies carved cinnabar lacquer screen, also from
exhibited in The Lofty Retreat from the Red made by the court painter Ding Guanpeng (fl. the Qianlong period and similarly pencilled
Dust: The Secret Garden of Emperor Qianlong, 1737-68), now preserved in the National Palace in gilt with bats on the reverse, no. 202, and
Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 2012, Museum, Taipei, could perhaps shed some light a polychrome carved lacquer three-panel
cat. no. 53. The Yunguanglou screen has an on the appearance of Guanxiu’s originals. Ding’s screen, illustrated in situ behind a throne in
inscription on the tenth panel – believed to be set of luohan paintings are published in Gugong Chongjingdian (Hall of Great Reverence), no.
257.

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