Letter from London

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by Ian McKay, e-mail: ianmckay1@btinternet.com

The China Trade

1: Water Buffalo Bill Sets a Provincial Record

The latest round of "Asia Week" sales took place in early May, but this time the biggest story was to be found not in the usual London salesrooms, but in Salisbury (Wiltshire), where local auctioneers Woolley & Wallis set a new record for any work of art sold in a provincial salesroom. This was in fact a proud record that they already held, having in July 2005 sold a Chinese Yuan Dynasty double gourd vase for $5.275 million (see M.A.D., September 2005, p. 34-D). This time the star turn was an Imperial spinach green jade water buffalo, approximately 8" long, that was only rediscovered just a few years ago.

An Imperial jade carving of the Qianlong period (1736-95), this recumbent water buffalo belongs to a group of very large jade carvings, mainly of horses or buffalos, that once adorned the palaces of Beijing. Before moving on to more detailed accounts of this and other Chinese works of art that made exceptional, and in many cases wholly unexpected, prices during "Asia Week," a small diversion on the subject of liberated works of art might be in order. I would emphasise, however, that these observations are general and not related specifically to the Salisbury jade.

Sales of works of art removed at the time of the sack of the Summer Palace in 1860 that brought an end to the Second Opium War, and in subsequent decades, are a continuing thorn in the cultural side for China. Simon Hewitt, a colleague and Paris correspondent on the U.K. journal Antiques Trade Gazette, reported recently on the fierce reaction caused by the proposed sale of a Qianlong white jade seal by Paris auctioneers Beaussant-Lefevre-a sale that followed pretty hot on the heels of two bronze animal heads from the Summer Palace that had been sold by another Paris auctioneer.

An article published in China Daily prior to the sale, wrote Hewitt, referred to the piece as a "looted relic," and cultural officials again voiced "strong indignation at this sort of repeated action that hurts people's feelings, harms their cultural interests, and violates international agreements…." The seal in the Beaussant-Lefevre sale went on to make around $2.29 million, and other recent, multimillion-dollar affronts to Chinese feelings have included the sale of a Kangxi seal in Toulouse (France) last summer and a Sotheby's Hong Kong sale of last October that included eight Imperial seals removed from the Hall of Imperial Longevity in the Forbidden City in 1900.

The origins of the water buffalo offered by Woolley & Wallis are not known, but it was last seen on the market in 1938, when Sackville George Pelham, 5th Earl of Yarborough, purchased it from London dealer John Sparks for what at today's exchange rates would be about $450.

In more recent times, its exact whereabouts have been something of a mystery, but in 2005, when the Earl's daughter Lady Diana Miller, who had gone to live in South Africa at the time of her father's death in 1948, returned to England, it was found among items recovered from a bank vault. Inside a wooden chest sealed with nails, string, and sealing wax, it was wrapped in newspapers dated 1940, so the 5th Earl had little enough time to enjoy his purchase before it disappeared from view.

Bearing the emperor's personal mark to the base and resting on a gilt bronze stand of the period, the jade was initially thought likely to make anything up to $1.5 million, but on May 20 a contest between a Hong Kong dealer on the telephone and Eskenazi Ltd. of London saw it fall to the latter at $6,216,390. The London Oriental art specialists also secured a jade brush pot of the Qing Dynasty at $841,040, and the May 20 and 21 Salisbury sale grossed around $9 million in all-which in itself is a record for an out-of-London salesroom.

The water buffalo is a traditional symbol of spring, strength, and tranquillity. Its bucolic aspect evokes the simple and true life in the countryside, and as the reputed mount of the philosopher Laozi, the buffalo also has strong Daoist connotations. An important animal in all rice cultivating societies, buffaloes have been depicted in Eastern art for thousands of years.

The Chinese practice of lining the shores of lakes and rivers with bronze buffaloes dates from the Tang Dynasty. It is based on the belief that Da Yu, the legendary emperor credited with founding the Xia Dynasty (circa 2100-circa 1600 B.C.) and controlling China's floodwaters, used to place iron buffaloes beside each of his projects. The most famous is the bronze example overlooking Lake Kunming in Beijing's Summer Palace, which was cast and then personally dedicated by the Emperor Qianlong in 1755.

2: As Auspicious as a Golden Carp

Fish have from the earliest times been a standard motif in Chinese art and design, and they played an especially important role in Daoist imagery. Golden carp were highly prized by Chinese connoisseurs during the Ming Dynasty, both for their rarity and their association with great wealth and success. The Jiajing emperor (1522-66) was a devout Daoist in whose reign Daoism became the principal ritual activity at court, and "fish" jars made during this period for the Imperial court are thus of particular significance. The combination of golden carp and lotus seen in the 12" high jar illustrated here was and is still regarded as especially auspicious and attractive.

Part of a Bonhams sale of May 14, this jar differs from the well-known wucai fish jars of the same period in that it has underglaze cobalt blue as its predominant colour, with the golden scales of the carp picked out in yellow and red enamels. This technique enabled the decorators to imbue the lotus and aquatic plants with more texture and semblance of movement than was possible in the wucai palette.

A number of jars of this type are known in museum collections, but it would seem that only one other Jiajing fish jar of this palette has ever come to auction—most recently at Christie's in November 2002, when it sold for $393,862.

The superb example at Bonhams was purchased in the 1930's from London dealers Bluett & Sons by Reginald Palmer, a member of the Huntley & Palmers family business—international giants in the biscuit, or should I say cookie and cake business, since the 19th century. At the time, Reginald Palmer was building a Chinese art collection at his county home (near the biscuit factory), and at today's rates, the price Palmer paid was roughly $100.

How times and values have changed! Bonhams were thinking of $300,000 or so, but on the day it was bid to $1,709,830.

3: From Imperial China to Biscuit Maker to the British Empire

Cloisonné enamel work was a favourite with the Qianlong emperor, and under his direction and inspiration, artists and craftsmen in the Imperial Palace workshops were encouraged to produce not only a wider range of objects than had previously been known, but to produce pieces that were innovative and even more technically challenging for a process that was already complex and laborious. Their designs were also expected to be aesthetically rewarding and eye-catching.

A censer seen at Sotheby's on May 13 was certainly eye-catching. Standing 4½' high (without the stand), it is of a size and intricate finish that would be associated with the Imperial Palace furnishings and would probably have been used in daily rituals, banquets, and ceremonies generally.

The intricately cast gilt openwork that allowed delicate scents to permeate the Imperial buildings takes the form of thousands of auspicious ruyi clouds and bats, symbols of good luck, while every aspect of the cloisonné decoration, including the elephant head supports, are reminiscent of earlier motifs and design traditions.

Expected to sell in the $225,000/300,000 range, it eventually reached $1,227,477 before being knocked down to a British dealer.

4: Zha Er Shan Enters the Hall of Fame

Acquired from the Vallin Galleries in Wilton, Connecticut, in the 1970's—at a sum not disclosed—and valued at $60,000/90,000 when put up for sale by Sotheby's on May 13, the mid-18th-century Imperial painting of "Bannerman" Zha Er Shan was sold for a whopping $451,408 to an Asian collector.

Dated 1760, this 4'9" high hanging scroll portrait of an officer of the Imperial guard is executed in ink and watercolours on silk and is one of a series of portraits of "bannermen" that were once housed in the Hall of Purple Splendour, a memorial to heroes located in the West Garden of the Imperial Palace precincts in Beijing.

Wearing a typical navy surcoat and with a single peacock feather hanging from the back of his black, fur-trimmed winter hat—an Imperial gift, bestowed only on officers who had distinguished themselves in military campaigns—this is a portrait of Zha Er Shan, whose actions during the Qianlong emperor's 1750's campaigns to secure the boundaries of Chinese Turkestan and exert Imperial control over the vast region of Inner-Asia had brought him honourable recognition. Above the portrait appears a eulogy to his merits and achievements, written on the right in kaishu, or standard script, and on the left in Manchu.

Other portraits of "bannermen" have been seen at auction, but none, I think, has ever before made such a high price.

5: Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens

With each bowl delicately enamelled around the gently rounded sides with groups of long-tailed cockerel, hen, and chicks cavorting in a garden setting, and to the interior with a central medallion enclosing a further cockerel and hen perched on rockwork amidst peony blooms and below a plantain tree, this pair of 6" diameter Imperial doucai bowls, bearing Yongzheng marks for the period 1722-35, topped the price lists at Christie's on May 12.

Imperial porcelains of the Yongzheng reign are often distinguished by their delicacy, restraint, and refinement, especially on those decorated using the doucai technique of underglaze blue outlines and overglaze enamels. In keeping with the Yongzheng emperor's interest in antiques, these bowls take their decorative scheme from the famous doucai "chicken" cups of the Ming Dynasty, Chenghua reign (1465-87).

However, since they are larger than those small cups, the variety of plants has been increased on the bowls. In addition to the peonies and lilies depicted on the earlier cups, these bowls include plantain, papyrus, and asters in a harmonious design. The other significant difference is the use of a glossy black enamel for the roosters' tails, which are also fuller and more naturalistically painted than on their Ming Dynasty counterparts.

Acquired in Japan in the 1930's and sent to London for sale by a Scandinavian collector, the bowls were valued by Christie's at around $225,000/375,000, but sold in the end for $2,599,088.

Irish Eyes May Still Be Smiling, but the Financial Light Has Dimmed

Unlike the Greeks, the Irish definitely have not been smiling quite so brightly of late. Recent years have seen some very high-profile and high-priced Irish picture sales at Christie's and Sotheby's, but the market is not what it once was, and this year, though Sotheby's still managed to mount an all-Irish sale on May 7, it ran to only 76 lots. Christie's combined their May 8 offering of 87 lots with sporting pictures-not such a bad combination in many ways—and have announced that they will in future continue to merge their Irish picture sales into other categories.

Even then, Sotheby's sold only half their lots, and at King Street the figure was a little lower still. The Irish art market has been in slow decline for a little while now, and now it suffers as other areas do from the fact that, unless there really is no option, consignors are reluctant to go to auction at a time of economic depression.

Sotheby's toured their pictures around Ireland before the sale, and among those that may have benefited from such extra exposure are the William Orpen oil of his wife, Grace, on top of the cliffs at Howth Head, Dublin Bay, and one of Paul Henry's atmospheric landscapes-both of which are illustrated and further described here. The Sotheby's sale also included a vivid red, orange, brown, and yellow evocation of the Breton coast by the Post-Impressionist painter Roderic O'Conor. The largest of four recorded versions of this scene at St. Guénolé, this 1898 canvas fell just short of the low estimate to sell for $528,275.

Christie's, who had also promoted some of their better pictures in Dublin, also enjoyed success with Orpen and another O'Conor landscape. Orpen's portrait of the Irish tenor John McCormack was their best seller at $542,960 to the National Gallery of Ireland, and again both pictures are illustrated and described in accompanying caption stories.

Christie's South Kensington also had an Irish sale, the over 140-lot Vincent Ferguson collection of contemporary Irish art, but while that sale saw a higher sales rate of around two-thirds of the lots, the overall total of $716,525 cannot make up for a shortfall of the money that the Irish sales saw rolling in a few years back. In the boom times, single pictures were regularly selling for that sort of sum, and more.

Canine Corner

This canine contribution features two lots from "A West Country Tradition," a sale of stock from Avon Antiques (a shop opened in 1963 in the Wiltshire town of Bradford-upon-Avon) that was held by Christie's South Kensington on May 21.

The 24" high white chap wearing pink dog-tags and seated on a blue velvet cushion is in fact a French stick stand, the tôle-peinte cutout fronting a tray and retaining a hoop in which sticks, canes, parasols, and the like could be placed. Probably dating to the late 19th century, it sold for $8290.

The pair of 24½" high, seated greyhounds is also thought to be of 19th-century manufacture. Carved limewood pieces (set on later bases), they sold for $11,843.

Athens Before the Sprawl

Economic gloom seems not to have had a hugely significant impact on the Greek art market, or at least not at Bonhams, where a May 19 sale grossed $4.5 million and set 17 artist records. Maria Agelopoulou of Art Expertise, the saleroom's Greek agents, said after the event, "We went into the sale knowing we would have a strong result…but even we were amazed."

Many of the more successful lots were by 20th-century Greek artists—the pick of them being Dawn, a symbolist work of the 1920's by Constantinos Parthenis that sold for $534,000—but in what I hope is not too contrary a move in such circumstances, I have selected for illustration here a much more traditional oil by an Austrian artist, Josef Hoffmann.

The subject is unmistakable, but this view of Athens is a pre-urban sprawl view that dates from 1857 and allows for a truly imposing canvas. No doubt some artistic licence has been taken, but Hoffmann's dramatic view of the Acropolis, crowned by the Parthenon (and taken from Mount Lycabettos?) found several admirers and sold for $117,000.

Gaming Tableware?

Kakelorum is a game that is thought to have originated in Austria in the mid-19th century. Had my German been more than minimal, I could have found out much more on the Web, but in simple terms it is a little bit like roulette. The player drops a ball into the cup, and it then rolls down a spiral chute and comes to rest in one of the holes in the dish or board, each of which can be given a number or value. This Strasbourg faience example of circa 1850 was offered as part of as chess sale at Bonhams on April 29 and sold for $3960.

Churchill Goes Large on His In-flight Breakfast

Most of the media publicity for an April 23 sale of historical documents, letters, etc. held by Mullocks of Ludlow focussed on a series of watercolours by the young Adolf Hitler—pictures "liberated" by a British Sergeant Major in 1945. Those modest works sold at prices from $5600 to $23,700, but the sale also included an unusual item of Churchill memorabilia.

In June 1954, accompanied by his Foreign Secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, Churchill made his last visit to the U.S. as Prime Minister. When breakfast was served on his BOAC flight, Churchill made several notes on the menu card and, unless he was ordering for Eden as well, specified a substantial meal that was to be brought to him on two separate trays.

On the first he wanted a poached egg, toast, jam, butter, coffee and hot milk, a jug of cold milk, and a small piece of cold chicken or other meat. On the second tray was to be placed grapefruit, a sugar bowl, a glass of orange squash (with ice)—and a whisky and soda.

Churchill's instructions or notes on the menu card also include the words "wash hands," presumably an indication to the steward that he would need the wherewithal—and, of course, a note that he would be finishing off with a cigar!

Retained by the steward as a souvenir and affixed to an album page with related press cuttings, the menu card sold for $8425.

All Aboard the Nord Express

Top lot in a poster sale held by Christie's South Kensington on May 20 was this coloured litho design by Cassandre for the Nord Express—sleeper services that ran from Paris to London, or to Brussels, Berlin, Riga, and Warsaw. A 1927 poster, this unbacked, condition-A example was sold for $29,025.

A Ukrainian-born artist whose family had moved to France at a time of political unrest, the man who worked under the name Cassandre was Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron (1901-1968). He had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris but began taking on poster work in the hope that it would fund his true desire to be a painter. Instead, he gained a reputation as one of the great poster designers of the Art Deco period.

Mouron also had a passion for typography, especially the more monumental and solid sans-serif faces, and it was around the time that this poster was produced that he began designing his own fonts, including Bifur (1929), Acier Noir (1936), and Piegnot (1937).

Capitals, he believed, were preferable and more legible where poster work was concerned, and the blend of typography and image is an integral and characteristic feature of his work. In later life he even designed typewriter fonts for Olivetti.

From Ancient Lands, Ancient Times, and Even Ancient Feet

I admit to being very partial to antiquities sales, so I am probably indulging myself here a little with a selection of more than half-a-dozen lots from two recent sales—most of them in fact drawn from the largest of them, a 428-lot Bonhams sale of April 29 that saw a healthy 84% of those lots sold and grossed $2.25 million. Nonetheless, I trust that some at least will appeal to M.A.D. readers.

Sent for sale at Bonhams by a French collector was a Roman mosaic panel depicting a naked Nereid—one of the very many daughters of the sea god Nereus—seated on the back of a bearded Triton, the pair of them holding aloft what may once have been the drapery that preserved her modesty. A dolphin leaps between the principal Triton's equine front legs, while his fishy tail appears to be entwined with that of another, younger looking Triton. Both of them sport pincered horns.

Executed in a subdued (faded?) palette of pink, russet, yellow, ochre, green, pale blue, grey, and white, this fine mosaic of the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. is a little over 5' square. It sold for a treble estimate $252,000.

A terra-cotta funerary wall painting of the 3rd century B.C. seen at Bonhams was one of very few Greek and Hellenistic wall paintings to have survived, and one of an even smaller number still in private hands. Those that have survived are mostly fragmentary (this one probably had a pediment at one time) and like the Bonhams example have decoration that has faded, but they are all that remains of the masterpieces described in ancient texts by Pausanias and Pliny.

The deceased is the central male figure in the painting seen second from left, seated on a high-backed throne and wearing his white himation draped over his left shoulder and around his waist. Women as mourners are often prominent in these funerary scenes, and the figure on the dead man's right is probably his wife, who looks on pensively, her chin supported in her hand. On his left is a dark skinned youth, probably a slave, and beyond him stands another young guard holding a circular shield and spear-and not partially erased as I first thought.

This was a piece from the collections of Seymour "Sy" Weintraub, a Californian film producer who in the late 1950's, and against plenty of good advice, bought up the film rights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories and revived the film career of Tarzan in a series of movies that included Tarzan's Greatest Adventure of 1959, a film that launched young Sean Connery's cinematic career.

In the 1970's, the Weintraubs donated many items from their extensive coin and antiquities collections to the J. Paul Getty Museum, but this funerary wall painting, which hung above their fireplace, had remained in the family until now. A 1975 valuation drawn up for the Weintraubs valued the work at $450,000, but Bonhams put a more modest $225,000/375,000 figure on it for their April sale, and in the end it sold for just $198,000. It was a disappointment in financial terms, and perhaps the market for such things is just too small, but a very rare and fascinating thing all the same.

Sold for $106,286 in the Christie's South Kensington antiquities sale of April 28—a smaller event at 248 lots, but again with a satisfying 84% sold—was a rare Gallo-Roman lidded glass urn or cinerarium from a fine, academic collection of ancient glass formed over 50 years by Peter and Traudi Plesch.

The cinerarium was well known throughout the Western Roman Empire and Britain in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., when cremation rather than burial was the preferred option, and glass urns have been found across Europe-though traces of fruit and oil found in some Italian examples suggest that such urns may also have been used for more domestic purposes.

The example in the South Kensington sale, a blown glass urn of a pale bluish green hue which stands nearly 12" tall, comes from a workshop in southern Gaul (France), and its elegant and elaborate form suggest that it was made to hold the ashes of someone quite important.

Another highlight of the Christie's South Kensington sale was a group of papyri with an impeccable 19th-century provenance. In the antiquities market, more than most, provenance is so very important, and though any removal of cultural artefacts from their land of origin may to some extent be seen as unacceptable, time does lend respectability.

These fragments of Book of the Dead scrolls for various officials, mostly dating from the New Kingdom period (circa 1500-1000 B.C.), were acquired in the 19th century by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), one of the great pioneers of photography. Something of a polymath, Fox Talbot also included among his many interests archaeology and, in particular, Assyriology—in which field he was one of the first to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions found at Nineveh. He was also extremely interested in ancient languages, and it would have been in this context that he acquired the Egyptian papyri being sold at South Kensington by a descendant.

Fox Talbot's correspondence shows that he acquired some with the help of Egyptologists and other travellers to the region, but he also bought from dealers. One letter from the London book dealers Payne & Foss reads: "The Papyrus which I understand you are desirous of having, you will find mentioned in our Catalogue No. 6814. It is a very fine one, we could not reduce the price to less than 23£. You can, if you please, send us the Papyrus you wish to part with and we will let you know what we can allow for it in exchange."

All bar one of these lots was sold, and all went to private buyers. Top lot at $74,944 was a group of a dozen fragments from a scroll made for the Waab-priest Amun Nesy-Nefer-Hr around 1000 B.C. Painted with various deities in the divisions of the Caverns of the Underworld and with red and black hieroglyphic text from spell 168A, "The Litany of the Gods," the fragments are around 9" tall and would have been part of a roll that was at least 6' long overall. Two of the fragments are illustrated.

Despite some pitted and surface discolouration, a Roman marble male torso of the 1st century A.D. sold at Bonhams for a treble estimate $140,400 to a dealer. It was once owned by the founder of Penthouse magazine, Bob Guccione—but was that before or after he began to concentrate his attentions on the female form?

The extensive and wide-ranging fine art collections of the late Jacques Schotte, a Belgian psychiatrist, provided over 70 lots for the Bonhams antiquities sale, among them the curious grey pottery object seen at top, second from right. It has a hollow and ribbed cylindrical body that contains a loose terra-cotta ball and is divided by a long vertical opening. Surmounted by a ram's or goat's head with long horns and having a looped handle to the back, this 13 3/8" high object is thought to have originated in Amlash (in what is now Iran) in the 1st millennium B.C. and is a zoomorphic musical instrument descended from earlier Sumerian instruments. It is played by rubbing a stick along the outside so as to produce a resonance within the hollow body—quite what the terra-cotta ball does is not clear to me—and sold for $4680.

A pair of Egyptian basketry sandals made of plaited papyrus reeds and fitted with reed thongs and instep straps (missing on the right foot) brought a bid of $7560 at Bonhams. Dating was difficult, as one can imagine, but the cataloguers thought the sandals a "Late Period" fashion—that is to say, after 600 B.C.

The Animals Went in Two by Two…

In fact, there are 100 pairs of animals, plus four who have lost their partners, ready to enter this particular Noah's ark, along with 41 pairs of birds and one loner. Noah and his family number eight, so as the ark is only 2' long from bow to stern, space is going to be at a premium in this painted and stencilled German wooden toy of 1870-80. In a Bonhams toy sale of May 19, it was bid to $12,600.

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