19TH CENTURY

Hanging wall screens inset with Dali marble plaques like the present examples became popular during the late Ming and Qing dynasties. Each panel of marble, with its natural veins and inclusions running through it, suggests a mountainous landscape. Thus, on the walls of a scholar’s studio, they offered varied and momentary escapes from the humdrum of the domestic environ. Compare with the very similar set of four currently on view in the Astor Court in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995.418a-d), illustrated by Paul Moss in When Men and Mountains Meet: Chinese and Japanese Spirit Rocks, London, 1995, no. 48. See, also, a set of four screens, but each with four marble panels, illustrated by Tian Jiaqing, Classic Chinese Furniture of the Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong, 1996, pp. 246-47, no. 110.