18TH-19TH CENTURY

Large screens of the present type are exceedingly rare, due to the large quantity of timber required for their construction and the fragility of their carved openwork decoration. The current example artfully employs carved boxwood inlay for the scenes of antiques in the top register and luohan along the sides and across the bottom register, its light color visually contrasting with the darker huanghuali frame. The grouping of ‘antiques’ motif is commonly found on folding screens as early as the Kangxi period, particularly on the lacquered ‘Coromandel’ screens, but depictions of Buddhist luohan are rarer. The most famous example is the pair of eight-panel zitan folding screens in the Great Buddha Shrine of the Yunguang Lou in Beijing, commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in 1758; each panel contains a gilt and lacquer painting of one of the Sixteen Luohan, based on original paintings by the Tang-dynasty artist Guanxiu (AD 832-912). However, examples in huanghuali are also known, including an eight-panel screen with openwork carving similar to that of the present example, also with the Eighteen Luohan arranged in the top, sides, and bottom registers, sold at Christie’s New York, 16 October 2001, lot 275. It is unclear whether the huanghuali examples were inspired by the famous zitan screens in the Yunguang Lou or whether the precedent for depicting luohan on folding screens was established earlier.