Juliette Hammer
Sale Coordinator
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY 女士藏品
Lot 125*
A CARVED CINNABAR LACQUER 'ORCHID PAVILION' BOX AND COVER Qianlong
15 May 2025, 11:30 BST
London, New Bond Street£5,000 - £8,000
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Chen Xie
Specialist
Edward Luper
Specialist, Chinese Works of Art
Lazarus Halstead
Head of Chinese and Asian Art, London
A CARVED CINNABAR LACQUER 'ORCHID PAVILION' BOX AND COVER
Qianlong
Of circular form, the cover carved with a landscape scene depicting the scholar Wang Xizhi seated in a terraced building and five other figures on the riverbank, with the cups and saucers floating downstream with the river's current, surrounded by rocks, groves of bamboo, and Chinese parasol trees, the straight sides carved with scrolling lotus flowers and leaves, the base and interior lacquered in black. 17.8cm (7in) diam. (2).
Of circular form, the cover carved with a landscape scene depicting the scholar Wang Xizhi seated in a terraced building and five other figures on the riverbank, with the cups and saucers floating downstream with the river's current, surrounded by rocks, groves of bamboo, and Chinese parasol trees, the straight sides carved with scrolling lotus flowers and leaves, the base and interior lacquered in black. 17.8cm (7in) diam. (2).
Footnotes
清乾隆 剔紅曲水流觴蓋盒
Provenance: Dr Emil Hultmark (1872-1943), Stockholm, and thence by descent
來源： Emil Hultmark博士(1872-1943)，斯德哥爾摩，並由後人保存迄今
Emil Hultmark was an art historian, collector, donor and patron of the arts. He combined important work as an art historian not only with the creation of one of the largest and most remarkable private art collections in Sweden, but also with the construction of an archive of Swedish artists and art craftsmen unparalleled in its extent, together with a library containing almost all that has been written about Swedish art. He loaned to the seminal International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy, London, 1935-1936, no less than five objects, Catalogue nos.140, 1872, 1949, 2983 and 2985.
The scene depicted in the present lot illustrates the 'Winding Stream Party' (曲水流觴 qushui liushang), where participants gathered along a meandering stream to compose poetry as cups of wine floated downstream to them. This literary gathering is closely associated with Wang Xizhi (王羲之), the Sage of Calligraphy, and his celebrated work 'Preface to the Orchid Pavilion' (蘭亭集序 lanting jixu). The seated figure in the terraced building is Wang Xizhi.
In the ninth year of the Yonghe period (353 CE), Wang Xizhi and a group of literati assembled at the Orchid Pavilion on Mount Kuaiji (modern-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang) for an elegant gathering. By the end of the gathering, twenty-six literati had composed thirty-seven poems, inspiring Wang Xizhi to write the preface, which has since been revered as the best calligraphic work in running script. For a comparable depiction of this scene, see a similar lacquer box and cover, Qianlong, featuring a 'Winding Stream Party', illustrated in Carving the Subtle Radiance of Colours: Treasured Lacquerware in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 2008, p.125, pl.116.
See also a related carved cinnabar lacquer circular box and cover, Qianlong, which was sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 28 May 2014, lot 3335.