A VERY RARE SMALL IMPERIAL CLOISONNE ENAMEL ‘QILIN AND LIONS’ VASE

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PROPERTY FROM THE SPRINGFIELD MUSEUMS, SOLD TO SUPPORT ART ACQUISITIONS AND COLLECTIONS CAREFOREWORD Established in 1896, and housed in a building modelled after an Italian palazzo, the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum was founded by George Walter Vincent Smith (1832-1923) and his wife Belle Townsley Smith (1845-1928) and embodies the vision of the couple whose eclectic collection it contains. As a young man, George Walter Vincent Smith made his fortune as a partner at Stivers and Smith Carriage Emporium, a New York City carriage manufacturing company best known for beautifully decorated carriages fashioned with high-end fabrics. Smith’s successful career, which combined an appreciation for beauty with business savvy, enabled him to retire at the age of just thirty-five and to pursue his true passion: collecting art. In 1871, Smith moved to the thriving industrial city of Springfield, Massachusetts, the hometown of his wife Belle Townsley Smith. In 1891, after several decades of enthusiastic purchasing, the Smiths generously gifted their collection to the privately run City Library Association (now the Springfield Museums Corporation), overseeing the construction of the building to house their objects. Mr. Smith served as the museum’s first director and curator. At the time of the museum’s opening, the still-growing collection of about 5,000 objects included contemporary American and Italian masterworks and furniture, European lace and Middle Eastern rugs. However, it was the extraordinary depth of the rare and unusual objects from China and Japan that was most appealing to visitors and critics. Unsurprisingly, in 1905, the publication Springfield Present and Prospective promoted the GWVS Art Museum as the city’s cultural gem and stated, “The principle and striking feature of the collections is the predominance of the art in porcelains, cloisonné ware, bronzes, jades, iron, lacquer, and ivory, of Japan and China…” It is purported that Smith’s collecting began with the purchase of an 18th-century cloisonné enamel vase in the 1850s from an unnamed New York dealer. ‘He saw the vase, and was immediately attracted by it. After an examination he bought it.’ In the late 19th century, numerous exhibitions were held that brought Chinese and Japanese decorative arts to the mesmerized audiences of the West. Exhibitions such as the International Exhibitions in London (1862), Paris (1869) and Chicago (1893) introduced ‘exotic’ and novel pieces to the public, and inspired the collecting imaginations of fashionable elites.Smith had a life-long romance with the decorative arts and culture of East Asia, even though he never travelled to the region. He purchased voraciously through well-known dealers in New York as well as Europe, especially London and Italy, when on their Grand Tour from 1882 to 1887. The Springfield Republican stated in 1899: ‘Mr. Smith never goes to New York without registering a vow that he will not be tempted to buy anything more, and yet when he sees something so rare and fine that he knows he will lose it forever unless he seizes the moment of opportunity, he is apt to yield.’ Between 1896 and 1906, Smith reported that he had more than doubled his Asian art collection in size and cost. By 1904 The Craftsman stated that Smith’s cloisonné enamels outranked the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.Smith stated throughout his long history of collecting that his primary criterion was beauty, commenting that, “The key note of this collection, was intended to be, and is, beauty – beauty and repose, beauty of form, and beauty of colour schemes, and consequently beauty of thought.” He also once memorably commented, “There are many hundreds of dollars, but there is only one such work of art.”The Springfield Museums, located in the heart of the downtown, is the largest cultural attraction in western Massachusetts. The five museums – the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, the Springfield Science Museum, the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History, and the newly opened (2017) Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum – offer over half a million annual visitors an extensive variety of exhibitions and innovative programs in art, history and science throughout the year. Established in 1857, the Springfield Museums’ primary mission is to inspire exploration of our connections to art, history and science through outstanding collections, exhibitions and programmes. The result of a lengthy process of evaluation and refinement of the permanent collection, proceeds realised from the sale will be used for the care of collections and to advance the Museums’ commitment to equity, diversity, and access through future art acquisitions of works by women artists, artists of colour and under-represented artists.

A VERY RARE SMALL IMPERIAL CLOISONNE ENAMEL ‘QILIN AND LIONS’ VASE

QIANLONG CAST FOUR-CHARACTER MARK WITHIN A SQUARE AND OF THE PERIOD (1736-1795)

Details

A VERY RARE SMALL IMPERIAL CLOISONNE ENAMEL ‘QILIN AND LIONS’ VASE
QIANLONG CAST FOUR-CHARACTER MARK WITHIN A SQUARE AND OF THE PERIOD (1736-1795)
The small baluster vase is brilliantly decorated on the exterior with a qilin above a treasure vase surrounded by eight lions playing with four be-ribboned brocade balls arranged in two rows amid colourful clouds between bands of petal lappets. The waisted neck is decorated with lotus scrolls flanked by a pair of gilt-bronze chilong-form handles and encircled by a gilt-bronze ring cast with lotus scrolls, below the galleried mouth chased with a double-line classic scroll on top.
4 ½ in. (11.2 cm.) high

Provenance

George Walter Vincent Smith (1832-1923), Springfield, Massachusetts, acquired prior to 1910

Lot Essay

The present vase is closely modelled in form and decoration after a larger cloisonné enamel vase (20 cm. high) dated to the mid-Ming dynasty in the Qing Court Collection (fig. 1), see The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Metal-bodied Enamel Ware, Hong Kong, 2002, p. 37, no. 35. The mouth and the upper neck of the Palace Museum example were replaced later, and are very similar in style to those found on an imperial Yongzheng-marked yellow-ground painted enamel vase of the same form decorated with peonies in the National Palace Museum, Taipei (fig.2), see Enamel Ware in the Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties, Taipei, 1999, pp. 198-199, no. 98 (21.3 cm. high).

Compare to a few other finely cast and exquisitely enamelled cloisonné vessels bearing the same Qianlong four-character marks cast in relief, such as a larger cloisonné enamel vase (17.4 cm. high) decorated with heart-shaped panels enclosing lions and brocade balls in the Palace Museum, Beijing, illustrated in Compendium of Collections in the Palace Museum, Enamels - 2 - Cloisonne in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Beijing, 2011, pp. 223, no. 177 (17.4 cm. high); and a small hu-form vase of the same size (11.2 cm. high) decorated with taotie masks sold at Christie’s London, 15 May 2018, lot 3.

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