Three Rare Small Painted Bronze Vessels and Covers

HAN DYNASTY (206 BC-AD 220)

Details

Three Rare Small Painted Bronze Vessels and Covers
Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220)
One a hu, one a bianhu, and the third a fanghu, all painted in a lively manner with mythical creatures and beings and swirling clouds between decorative borders: the hu with fairies riding mythical beasts in a landscape; the bianhu with a man seated playing the qin flanked by trees on one side and a fairy riding a lion on the reverse; and the fanghu with a dragon on two sides and a phoenix on the other two sides, two vessels with small taotie-mask loop handles, the other with plain loop handles, each cover with a small loop handle rising from a qautrefoil calyx reserved on a textured ground, all painted in red, pale green and pale yellow or white pigment
7 to 7 3/8in. (17.8 to 18.3cm.) high, cloth box (3)

Provenance

Acquired in December 1993.

Lot Essay

These three unusual vessels are similar to a set of four illustrated in Royal Ontario Museum, The T.T. Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art, 1996, no. 37, where it is noted that one of the hu, which is corroded shut, contains an as-yet untested liquid, suggesting that these vessels were made specifically for the tomb. Like the present vessels, they are painted with animals, figures and musicians amidst abstract mountains and water representing immortal bliss. Another similar hu and cover in the collection of the Yale Art Museum is illustrated by M.G. Neill in the exhibition catalogue, The Communion of Scholars, China House Gallery, China Institute in America, New York, 1982, no. 10, where the author, based on the style of the decoration dates it Eastern Han, 1st century AD, rather than an earlier Western Han date.

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