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Lot Essay
This large hanging screen, inlaid in baibaoqian, depicts blossoming bitao (Ornamental peach flowers). At the upper right is an imperial poem inscribed in relief. The poem reads:
“This is the vernal thousand-petalled bloom of the Western Pool;
before the breeze, it glows resplendent, luxuriant and dense.
Why does it not bear fruit upon its branches?
The seeds of immortals are, it seems, sparingly bestowed upon men.”
Entitled Imperial Inscription on Peach Blossoms, the poem was composed by the Qianlong Emperor and is recorded in the Second Collection of Imperial Poems (Yuzhi shi er ji), juan 35, under “Inscription on Zou Yigui’s Album of Flowers, Fifteen Poems, no. 1: Peach Blossoms,” dated to the seventeenth year of the Qianlong reign (1752). The poem was originally written to accompany the Peach Blossoms leaf in a floral album by the court painter Zou Yigui, and was subsequently widely reproduced in court decorative arts.
By combining the imperial verse with a corresponding bitao motif rendered in hardstone inlay, the present screen exemplifies the Qing court aesthetic of the “poetic image” (shiyi tu), in which text and image are conceived in deliberate resonance. The work not only proclaims imperial literary refinement, but also imbues the peach blossom with connotations of purity and restrained elegance, as suggested by the phrase “the seeds of immortals are sparingly bestowed.”
“This is the vernal thousand-petalled bloom of the Western Pool;
before the breeze, it glows resplendent, luxuriant and dense.
Why does it not bear fruit upon its branches?
The seeds of immortals are, it seems, sparingly bestowed upon men.”
Entitled Imperial Inscription on Peach Blossoms, the poem was composed by the Qianlong Emperor and is recorded in the Second Collection of Imperial Poems (Yuzhi shi er ji), juan 35, under “Inscription on Zou Yigui’s Album of Flowers, Fifteen Poems, no. 1: Peach Blossoms,” dated to the seventeenth year of the Qianlong reign (1752). The poem was originally written to accompany the Peach Blossoms leaf in a floral album by the court painter Zou Yigui, and was subsequently widely reproduced in court decorative arts.
By combining the imperial verse with a corresponding bitao motif rendered in hardstone inlay, the present screen exemplifies the Qing court aesthetic of the “poetic image” (shiyi tu), in which text and image are conceived in deliberate resonance. The work not only proclaims imperial literary refinement, but also imbues the peach blossom with connotations of purity and restrained elegance, as suggested by the phrase “the seeds of immortals are sparingly bestowed.”