Page 23 - Christie's Irving Collection Lacquer Bronse jade and Ink March 2019

FOREWORD

FLO R E N C E A N D H E R B E R T RV I N G A N D T H E I R C O LL EC T I O N
I

It was common practice for art collectors in The jade fgure mentioned above carries the story of
earlier generations to share the delectation of their the Irvings as collectors, engaged museum goers and
acquisitions, frst with a circle of like-minded friends, patrons. They learned from museum visits, collected
and eventually with the public by giving their collections according to their own taste, and also to complement
to museums. The greater the collection, the more likely the existing collections in the museum. Besides
this was to happen. The greater the museum, the more providing major support, they became lifelong friends
likely it is to receive great collections. For the Metropolitan of the director and quite a few of the curatorial and
Museum, housing the collective collections of several administrative staf of the Metropolitan Museum.
generations of New York collectors, the Irvings were the
latest contributors in this tradition. The Irvings had an interest in Asian art generally, as is
evident in the galleries bearing their names in the Asian
In the Irving gallery for Chinese decorative arts in the Art Department of the Met. Their special interest was
Metropolitan Museum are a pair of fgures of acolytes in in lacquer. When they learned of the lack of lacquer
green jade in a large wall case showing a selection from objects in the Met’s Asian art collection, they embarked
the Bishop Collection of Chinese jades. This mirror- on a campaign, lasting for several years, to collect
image pair was carved from the same block of jade and lacquer pieces from every period and every region in
had to have been produced in the same workshop in the East Asia and gave the collection to the museum.
late eighteenth century when the supply of jade from Their giving took on yet another scale when they
Khotan in distant Xinjiang was plentiful. Only one of the bequeathed the major part of their entire collection to
pair was from the Bishop collection. The other is an the Metropolitan Museum. Again, the same principle
Irving gift. They purchased it in London after they saw applies, that their gift would enhance the existing
the Bishop piece in the Metropolitan Museum. The pair collections in the museum. The rest they wished to
of jade fgures were reunited in 1997 in the location recirculate, so that a new generation will derive the
where they are now exhibited, after having been same pleasure and enrichment as they themselves did
separated for about a century – the Bishop Collection from their own collection, and perhaps follow their
was donated in 1902. example to become benefactors in the next stage of
the development of the art museum.

James C. Y. Watt

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