Page 17 - The Parry Collection Bonhams London November 2 2021

The Parry Collection:

Collecting Chinese Art in Britain in the First

Half of the 20th Century

Dominic Jellinek

The taste for Chinese porcelain, readily available in Europe
from the 17th century, and for Chinoiserie, was well
established in England by the 18th century. The later 19th
century saw the development of the aesthetic taste for Kangxi
blue and white, promoted by the likes of Whistler, Rosetti and
Oscar Wilde, and gently lampooned by George du Maurier in
Punch in 1880.
Political turmoil in China in the second half of the 19th century
brought to light treasures previously unseen and of a quality
of workmanship well beyond that of the goods manufactured
in China for the west. As a result many remarkable objects
found their way to the antique shops of Peking and the major
European cities. Collections were formed by Europeans
posted to China at this time with diplomatic or military
missions, for example those of Sir Frederick Wright-Bruce
(1814-1867) and Captain Charles Oswald Liddell (1854-1941).
Bruce, who was Britain’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Royal Academy of Arts, International Exhibition of Chinese
Plenipotentiary to China from 1858 until 1865, formed a Art, Burlington House, 1935-6
collection of porcelain and works of art, mostly of the 18th
century, part of which was exhibited at the Bethnal Green
Museum, 1913-1923.
In the first decade of the twentieth century the Empress
Dowager, reluctantly, started to try and modernise her huge
country. European engineers were brought in to construct
railways and the necessary excavations for these projects
turned up numerous tombs, some with fine ceramics from the
Tang to Song periods. These objects were reaching London
by about 1906, and were bought from London dealers,
particularly S.M. Franck, John Sparks, T.J. Larkin and John
Audley, by a few discerning and adventurous collectors,
such as George Eumorfopoulos, William Cleverly Alexander
and Robert Henry Benson. These astute men were working
in the dark, as there was no readily available book covering
this aspect of Chinese ceramics until the publication of R.L.
Hobson’s Chinese Pottery and Porcelain in 1915.
After the First World War London’s Asian art dealers
developed their contacts with European agents based in
China and shipments of these pre-Ming wares began to
appear on the market. They immediately appealed to a small
group of collectors, among them A.L. Hetherington, F.N.
Schiller, Oscar Raphael and Henry Blackwall Harris.
In January 1921, the Oriental Ceramic Society was founded,
following a meeting at the London home of Stephen D. Sir Percival David, Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition Committee
Winkworth, with George Eumorfopoulos elected as President. Director, and Tang Xifen, Exhibition Secretary

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