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PROPERTY OF AN EAST COAST PRIVATE COLLECTION
8039 With the fall of the Qing in 1912, keen art dealers like Yamanaka saw a
A RARE PAIR OF WHITE JADE tremendous opportunity for acquiring important examples of Chinese
‘BIRD’ BOXES AND COVERS art from the most patrician families of Beijing. Arriving in the summer
18th Century of 1912, just months after the Xuantong Emperor Puyi’s abdication in
Each crisply carved as a long-tailed bird, the lower body with finely February of that year, Yamanaka made arrangements to acquire the
detailed claws tucked underneath comprising the box, and the upper contents of the mansion from Puwei, who was seeking asylum in the
body comprising the cover with carefully incised feathers leading to a German protectorate and facing accumulating debt. In Yamanaka’s
stiffly upright tail, each bird clasping in its beak a multi-headed branch words “by his (Prince Gong) orders, everything was as he left, even to
of lingzhi fungus variously inlaid with rose quartz and jadeite, the jade a half-smoked cigarette.”
of an attractive pale green with cloudy highlights; tiered wood stands.
6in (15.4cm) long, each Within months, the property from the royal home was being uncrated
in New York City, to be offered February 27th – March 1st on Madison
US$40,000 - 60,000 Square South. The sale brought $279,805 (an equivalent of roughly
$6,800,000 in 2016 dollars) for 535 lots, and the buyers that peppered
十八世紀青白玉鳥形蓋盒 the salesroom were among the cognoscenti of the day. Joseph
Duveen, C. T. Loo, John D. Rockefeller Jr, and Louis C. Tiffany all
Provenance successfully bid, and museums would benefit immediately with Charles
An East Coast private collection Lang Freer spending lavishly on three archaic jades and three Shang
Collection of Edward M. M. Warburg, by repute bronzes. The New York Times review of the sale on March 2, noted
Yamanaka & Co., The American Art Galleries, New York, 22 February that “Big prices were the rule at the Prince Kung sale” but sadly noted
1913, The Remarkable Collection of the Imperial Prince Kung of China, “the art treasures of the Palace were neglected and covered with dust
lot 26 (illustrated), by repute and dirt when the arrangement was made to have them brought to
Prince Gong, Puwei (1880-1936), by repute this country.” The high prices achieved in the sale had an unfortunate
Prince Gong, Yixin (1833-1898), by repute aftershock as shortly after the sale American Art News warned its
readers that there was a rash of counterfeit bronzes being offered “of
Of the numerous important sales of Chinese art arranged by modern manufacture and of inferior quality” and “probably inspired by
Yamanaka Sadajiro in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, none is the high figures brought…at the Prince Kung sale”.
more legendary then the “The Remarkable Collection of the Imperial
Prince Kung” held in New York over the course of three days in the late
winter of 1913. Yamanaka acquired the entire collection from Puwei
(Prince Gong, 1880-1936) who inherited the multi-building compound
Gong Wangfu (Prince Gong’s Mansion) and its contents from his
grandfather Yixin (Prince Gong, 1833-1898), the sixth son of the
Daoguang emperor. Prior to being occupied by the Qing royal lineage,
the mansion was the home of He Shen, the notoriously powerful
eunuch under the Qianlong emperor.
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