Lot Essay
Although this fine animal is dated by comparison with similar carvings to the late Ming period, it is not at all impossible that further research in jade will justify an earlier date. The animal is carved with intriguing carefulness, from a type of stone which has been published elsewhere as being used at a somewhat earlier date: see for example the reclining buffalo dated 'Song Dynasty or later' in the Hotung Collection, illustrated by J. Rawson, op.cit., 1995, no.24:14. However, the subject seems very much in the Ming taste, as an animated, somewhat playful subject carefully finished around the head and legs with hair markings in a more sophisticated manner than the comparable, but simpler, animals like the horse illustrated by Rawson, ibid., no.26:15. See also the mythical animal with cub, carved and lustrously polished from a similar greenish stone of greyish tint and retaining brown skin in a few areas. exhibited as no.155 in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Chinese Jade Carvings, 1983, Catalogue, from the Collection of W. P. Chung, dated to the late Ming period; although the rounded contours and fine finishing also recall the splendid crouching yellowish-green jade feline in the same exhibition, no.147, dated late Song - early Ming. See also the softly-rounded partially brown-skinned Ming Dynasty goose, ibid., no.183, from the Chu Collection. Finally, an amusing group of a mythical feline and cub, carved again from a greyish-green well-polished stone, is dated to the Ming Dynasty by Roger Keverne, Jade, fig.5, p.198.