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Lot Essay
Compare with an 18th century white jade brushpot in the National Palace Museum collection included in the exhibition The Refined Taste of the Emperor: Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch'ing Court, National Palace Museum, Taipei, and illustrated in the Catalogue, p.182, no.60. See also another similar example sold in our Hong Kong Rooms, 31 May 2010, lot 1899.
The pleasing proportions and fine carving on the current brushpot would have made it the ideal addition to the scholar's desk.
One of the favorite images of the rural idyll depicted by Chinese painters such as Li Tang (c. 1050-after 1130) shows a small boy either riding or leading a water buffalo. A painting by Li Tang, 'Herd Boy with Water Buffalo and Calf', in the National Palace Museum, Taipei is illustrated by A. B. Wicks (ed.) in Children in Chinese Art, Honolulu, 2002, p. 54, fig. 2.6.
In Chinese Jades From Han to Ch'ing, The Asia Society, New York, 1980, James Watt writes that the "subject of a boy on a buffalo made its first appearance in the art of the Southern Song period." Apart from appearing in paintings, ceramic and bronze forms, the subject of the buffalo and its boy minder also can be found in jade carvings from the Yuan dynasty through to the Qing.
The pleasing proportions and fine carving on the current brushpot would have made it the ideal addition to the scholar's desk.
One of the favorite images of the rural idyll depicted by Chinese painters such as Li Tang (c. 1050-after 1130) shows a small boy either riding or leading a water buffalo. A painting by Li Tang, 'Herd Boy with Water Buffalo and Calf', in the National Palace Museum, Taipei is illustrated by A. B. Wicks (ed.) in Children in Chinese Art, Honolulu, 2002, p. 54, fig. 2.6.
In Chinese Jades From Han to Ch'ing, The Asia Society, New York, 1980, James Watt writes that the "subject of a boy on a buffalo made its first appearance in the art of the Southern Song period." Apart from appearing in paintings, ceramic and bronze forms, the subject of the buffalo and its boy minder also can be found in jade carvings from the Yuan dynasty through to the Qing.