Page 72 - CHRISTIE'S Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art 09/14 - 15 / 17

VARIOUS PROPERTIES

D942
A RARE GILT-METAL AND PAINTED WOOD FAN

GUANGXU PERIOD (1875-1908)
The gilt-metal head of the fan is chased on one side as a descending phoenix with a shou character on
its breast, above a shou medallion and a bat suspending a ribbon-tied wan emblem, and the reverse is
engraved with eight bats swooping amidst clouds, which is repeated as painted decoration on the separate
wood pole which sits in a wood base of double-gourd shape painted with further shou medallions, and
rests on a dome painted with wind-tossed waves.
82Ω in. (208.53 cm.) high overall
$20,000-30,000

PROVENANCE

Private collection, California, acquired before 1915, and thence by descent within the family.
This rare fan is similar to those seen in a series of portraits of the Empress Dowager Cixi taken
sometime after 1903, and illustrated by Liu and Xu Qixian (eds.) in Gu gong zhen cang ren wu zhao
hui cui (Exquisite Figure-Pictures from the Palace Museum), Beijing, 1994, pp. 30-38. (Fig. 1) In
these portraits the peacock fans are positioned in front of a screen and fank the Empress Dowager.
These fans were a reference to royal status, and, as the peacock is associated with the bodhisattva
Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin), they therefore associated the Dowager Empress with Guanyin, the Goddess
of Mercy.
This fan is being sold without the peacock feathers.
清光緒 彩繪木鑲鎏金金屬扇座

Fig. 1. Cixi, Empress Dowager of China, 1835-1908, Photographs, Freer Gallery of Art and
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Purchase,
70 FSA A.13 SC-GR-251.