A PALE CELADON AND RUSSET JADE BOULDER

Details

A PALE CELADON AND RUSSET JADE BOULDER
QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

Finely carved in high relief and in openwork, with a small figure standing beneath a towering cliff with layered rockwork, leaning on a staff and looking up at a branch growing precariously from a crag, surrounded by pine and maple trees highlighted in russet and grey tones, the reverse of the rocky boulder with two cranes beside a waterfall
6 3/4 in. (17.2 cm.) high, stand

Provenance

Sotheby's Hong Kong, 25 November 1987, lot 403

Literature

P. Desautels, The Jade Kingdom, New York, 1986, pl. 7
'A Collection of Chinese Carved Jade', Lapidary Journal, June 1979, cover illustration
Robert Kleiner, Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, Hong Kong, 1996, no. 131

Exhibited

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1977, Chinese Jade from Southern California Collections, Catalogue no. 34
Christie's New York, 13-26 March 2001
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, August 2003 - December 2004

Lot Essay

The carver has made superb use of the differing colour tones in the material to create a lively composition. The boulder is very deeply carved, resulting in a stage-like platform at the front of the carving which draws the viewer into the intimate setting.

Compare the composition of the present boulder with another of celadon tone, also carved with a lone hermit, and with the addition of an inscribed poem describing the scene, from the Seattle Art Museum, illustrated by Geoffrey Wills, Jade of the East, New York, 1972, fig. 58.

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