Main News Index

Following the tremendous spring Asia Week in March 2005, in which Sotheby's sold 23 lots over $100,000 and achieved the three highest auction prices for Asian art that week, including a previously undiscovered 14th Century copper-red bottle which brought $2 million, the September sales of Chinese and Asian art will feature a number of treasures, including a monumental pair of late Ming dynasty lacquer cabinets with reignmarks of the Wanli emperor (1573-1619) (pictured left). Acquired in Beijing in 1918 by a scion of the Goodrich Tyre fortune of Akron, Ohio, the cabinets were purchased upon their removal from a temple within the Imperial palace grounds. At almost 11 feet high, these oversized cabinets with their matching hat-chests could only have graced the cavernous halls of Imperial palaces. The quality and consistency of the lacquer is astounding, and after 400 years they remain in superb condition, exhibiting a very even craquelure. Their long vertical exteriors are treated as hanging scroll landscapes, with 'Shangri-La' scenes of faraway pavilions and misty mountains amid rivers drawing the viewer's eye up their massive doors and sides. The cabinets are estimated to bring $1/1.5 million.

Highlighting the sale are three Ming blue-and-white porcelain vases, each a consummate masterpiece of its type and made within 100 years of each other. These works provide insight into the changing political and artistic developments during a key period of Chinese history, the 15th century. One of these fabled vases, a 'prunus blossom vase' or meiping, was used as a lamp by philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller in his upstate New York residence, Kent House, up until last year. At 14 inches, it is one of the larger sizes of this form and its refinement in construction and decoration are breathtaking. Painted with a central field set with six detached sprays of luscious fruit, it reveals all the key characteristics of Ming porcelain. The design is executed from nature with almost documentary precision so that each different fruit is identifiable – peach, pomegranate, crab-apple, loquat, lychee and longan. The creamy white porcelain is treated like an unfolding handscroll, moving clearly away from the over-crowded banded designs of the 14th Century which occupied every inch of ceramic space. Instead, the vases from the Yongle period display their decoration in a restrained and lyrical manner, with the boldness of the cobalt-blue reaching a purity that would be unsurpassed for hundreds of years. While several meiping are in major institutional collections, a smaller meiping was recently sold by Sotheby's Hong Kong in May 2005 for $1.18 million. This vase is expected to bring $300/400,000.

A wider blue and white jar, in guan form, painted with a ferocious five-clawed dragon striding among clouds, was executed around the 1440s. Made just at the beginning of this tumultuous period, termed 'the Interregnum', the dragon guan jar is actually a political statement, declaring the authority of the Son of Heaven. Seen as a benevolent yet powerful dragon, the strong claws and writhing scaly body pull clouds and elemental forces to bring rain, fecundity and prosperity to the people of China. It is estimated to sell for $100/150,000.

The third major discovery is a circa 1460s meiping from a famous collection formed in the 1930s by Shanghai collector J.M. Hu. It is one of the finest pieces executed in the so-called 'windswept' style. A horseman is flanked by sword-bearer and servant with baskets of food and wine, while the mood is conveyed by breezes rustling the leaves of arching willows and pines. This is possibly a depiction of the historical episode, 'Xiao He pursuing Han Xin by Moonlight,' whose theme of honor and duty to the empire found resonance as the Ming dynastic line regained the Mandate of Heaven upon the Zhengtong's release (est. $150/200,000).

Three other unique masterpieces reveal the development of the Imperial concept during the succeeding Qing dynasty. The first is an unparalleled rarity, a grand-scale court painting of a Prince of the Royal Blood, Prince Guo (1733-1765) (pictured right), sixth son of the emperor Yongzheng and half-brother of the emperor Qianlong. Commemorative court paintings with sitters depicted in rigid symmetry and frontality were strictly propagandist depictions of the authority of the state, but this unruly character is hinted at in the portrait. It is recorded that at age seven, he was caught watching fireworks instead of attending class, and having run from the presence of the emperor, an even worse affront, his chief eunuch was given sixty lashes This attempt at individualization and expression was revolutionary, and an innovation only introduced by Western Jesuit painters to the Qing court in the early 18th Century. In the discovery of the original ink under-drawing beneath the colors on silk, evident is the sure and expressive hand of the famed artist Giuseppe Castiglione and his studio, who was the favorite of the Court. Three other depictions of Prince Guo are known, including two in the Arthur M Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, but no other grand-scale court painting of this quality has appeared at auction in recent years (est. $300/500,000). In addition, there will be a selection of Modern Chinese paintings from the collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth featuring a Lin Fengmian, Mountain Landscape, 1970s (est. $150/200,000), an extraordinary rare Pan Tianshou Calligraphy from 1961 (est. $50/70,000), an early Qi Baishi landscape from 1922 (est. $150/200,000) and several lovely works by Zhang Daqian.

The Bai Ma Xuan Collection

Within the various-owners sale is The Bai Ma Xuan Collection, which was passionately formed over ten years and charts the range of ceramic production from the first millennium. It focuses on the finest wares produced during the Tang and Song dynasties. The Bai Ma Xuan Collection, meaning "The White Horse Pavilion," a name reflecting the collector's equal passion for horses, is exemplary in having outstanding pieces from a range of kilns. The Collection is estimated to bring in excess of $1.5 million.

From the Yue kilns in the south, a 10th Century ovoid vase and cover is a widely acknowledged star of the collection. With molded medallions of flowers at the shoulder above incised clouds and vapor-trails, and a finely carved flower forming the cover, it exhibits the finest celadon glaze that was prized by contemporary writers who likened it to the resonance of jade and purity of silver. It is estimated to sell for $250/350,000.

Other highlights include an 11th Century bowl from the Ding kilns in the north near present-day Beijing (pictured left). Of rare hemispherical form, it is incised with wriggling dragons both on the interior and exterior. Although striding dragons on the exterior of bowls became popular three to four hundred years later, in Ming blue and white, no Song dynasty ceramic has previously been recorded with this design. It is estimated to sell for $200/300,000.

A large qingbai vase with an icy blue glaze is also on offer. The superb vase is carved overall with two registers of scrolling flowers, transforming from lily to lotus and then from peony to camellia on the same stem. Although few similar examples are in Japanese and Western museums, no other qingbai vase of this type has previously appeared at auction (est. $150/200,000).

All these rare masterpieces are supplemented by an outstanding group of Tang dynasty vessels in 'three-color' or sancai glazes, several with blue splashes, including a 'goose' medallion' tray (est. $30/40,000) and a phoenix-head ewer (est. $35/55,000).

Arts of the Buddha

This annual sale presents the aesthetic achievements of all the major Far Eastern cultures through their differing experiences in receiving, interpreting and transmitting the Buddhist religion. Despite changing contexts and cultural mores, the eye of the anonymous artist in attempting to create a physical representation of the Divine has unerringly led to the pinnacle of artistic traditions in countries as essentially diverse as India, China and Cambodia.

In the earliest devotional representations of the Buddha, the Enlightened One is so divine as to be un-representable and invisible. The challenge of depicting the un-depictable led to the adoption of foreign representational sources and to the great Indian sculptural traditions of Gandhara and Gupta. The first style is exemplified by massive grey schist figures of youthful men with sensuous eyes and flowing locks, draped in distinctly Hellenistic robes. An outstanding example in superb condition is on offer at auction, with the rare embellishment of kneeling adoring figures in the Buddha's halo ( est. $600/900,000). The sale is supplemented by six other Gandharan figures, which range from bodhisattva figures dressed as Indian princelings who have achieved enlightenment to slender ethereal Buddhas with iconic gestures.

By the 6th Century, the power of these Indian figures transformed the sculptural tradition of China, leading to a renaissance in pictorial and physical form, three-dimensionality, movement and sensuality. A rare early gilt-bronze shows the very beginnings of this process, and although cast in China, it bears a clear debt to Gandharan and Guptan models in the volumes of its head and drapery (est. $100/150,000). By the late 6th century, this reaches full flower in an outstanding limestone figure of the future Buddha, Maitreya, in 'pensive' pose. Seated upon an hourglass stool, the Buddha leans forward, resting a missing right arm upon the knee yet turning the hand up towards his face as he ponders his impending duty to save the world in the next cycle of existence. Within his calm symmetrical features and the harmonious echoing of the hourglass body and stool, the anonymous artist has achieved the near-impossible - a physical representation expressing the very action of thought, responsibility and the imminent nature of both time and salvation (pictured on page 5, est. $300/500,000).

Other tremendous rarities include two Khmer figures of Avalokitesvara (est. $150/200,000 each) and a monumental fragment of a 13th / 14th Century wall fresco, formerly in the collection of the famous Kyoto museum, the Fujii Yurinkan. Probably removed in the 1900s from lost massive temples in Shanxi or Henan, similar frescoes form centerpieces in major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City and the Guimet in Paris. The present fragment depicts a dragon-king, or lokapala, one of four standing guard over the cardinal directions, symbolizing the universal authority of the Buddhist law, or dharma, which radiates in every direction. At almost 10 feet high, this ancillary section would have formed part of an enormous fresco cycle that would dwarf Western equivalents such as the Sistine Chapel (est. $500/700,000).

For more information visit WWW.SOTHEBYS.COM