CHINE, DYNASTIE QING, ÉPOQUE KANGXI (1662-1722)

Meticulously carved in the round, this finely detailed jade horse belongs to a rare category of jade sculptures portraying horses in a reclining posture, inspired by Song dynasty prototypes. A comparable example from the Song dynasty, a jade recumbent horse with its head facing forward and resting on its outstretched forelegs, from the Gerald Godfrey Private Collection of Fine Chinese Jades, was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong on 30 November 2016, lot 3214. A closely related imperial white jade horse is illustrated in Zhongguo yuqi quanji, vol. 6, Shijiazhuang, 1991, pl. 267.
For a more recent auction result, a white jade figure of a recumbent horse with its head resting on its forelegs, dated to the 18th century from the LJZ Collection, was sold at Christie’s New York on 21 September 2023 (lot 833), achieving $226,800.