'The biggest moment of the year for UK sales of Asian art'
28 October 2020 Timed to coincide with the influx of collectors and connoisseurs to annual Asian Art in London event, November is traditionally the biggest moment of the year for UK sales of Asian art
A Qianlong imperial yellow ground silk brocade ‘dragon’ panel - £10,000-15,000 at Lyon & Turnbull.
Despite the ongoing restrictions that have put a stop to champagne openings, Asian art exhibitions and auctions continues much as in previous years this autumn with a back-to-back roster of specialist auctions catering to a huge range of collecting disciplines from Tang burial figures to Meiji bronzes. Most of these sales – collectively thousands of lots offered from the beginning to mid November - are listed on thesaleroom.com. Pictured here are five potential highlights.
An imperial silk brocade panel
Lyon & Turnbull’s Fine Asian Works of Art in London on November 5 features this Qianlong (1735-95) imperial yellow ground silk brocade ‘dragon’ panel, 18in x 2ft 7in (46 x 83cm).
The textile (purchased from the auction house in the 1960s) comes with a framed letter composed by one Miss MF Willis, stating that her uncle Major General Swanton acquired this piece ‘in Peking, 1840’ – although historically, 1860 and the Second Opium War is more likely to be accurate.
There are two British soldiers to which ‘Major General Swanton’ could refer: William Oliver Swanton (1827-1908) of the Madras Staff Corps and William Nowell Swanton (1833-1912) of the Indian Army.
Estimate £10,000-15,000.
Kangxi ewers with a Pierpont Morgan provenance
Sworders’ Asian art sale in Stansted Mountfitchet on November 6 includes this pair of Kangxi (1662-1722) pear form blue and white ewers that bear labels for the Pierpont Morgan collection.
They come for sale from the family of Jay Gould (1836-92), one of the famous US ‘Industrial Robber Barons’ whose sometimes sharp business practices made him one of the wealthiest men of the late 19th century.
His son George (1864-1923), also a financier and railroad executive, was an important client of the dealer Joseph Duveen.
The 7in (17cm) high ewers are guided at £1500-2000.
Bada Shanren - the voice of the yimin
Roseberys’ Asian art sale in London’s West Norwood on November 11 includes this ink on paper hanging scroll by Zhu Da (Bada Shanren) (c.1626-1705). The scene of two birds on a branch, 14 x 22in (35 x 55cm), has a guide of £50,000-80,000.
Exhibited at the Ashmoleum Museum, Oxford, between 2016-18, it comes by descent from Edward Osman Bruce Cowen who bought it in the 1940s.
‘Ted’ Cowen arrived in Tientsin in the late 1920s to live with his father who was editor of the North China Morning Post. Later in Peking, where he worked as a buyer and manager for a fur trader, he lived in Wei Shan Tsui Lao T’ang (Hall of Greatest Happiness and Goodness) in the former palace of Yikuang (Prince Qing).
Cowen spent his latter year in Hong Kong, bequeathing a collection of imperial costumes and embroideries to the Hong Kong Museum of Art.
Living in the time of the birth of the Qing dynasty, Bada Shanren is often referred to as the voice of the yimin, one of the discarded subjects of the Ming dynasty. His works, many of them painted while working as a relative hermit in a studio he called Wuge caotang (Hut for Sleeping Alone and Waking to Sing), exhibit subtle loyalist sentiments with depictions of birds and animals a means to subtly mock Qing officials.
The charity shop minogame
This kakeimon model of the mythical flaming tortoise or minogame, c.1660-80, comes for sale at Woolley & Wallis’s sale of Japanese Works of Art in Salisbury on November 10.
Only three examples of this particular 7in (18cm) model were recorded – one is at Burghley House – until Woolley’s vendor recently found another in a charity shop in the Cotswolds.
The estimate is £1000-2000.
A French collection of netsuke
Bonhams will also offer a single-owner sale of netsuke from a French private collection on November 4.
Collected over three decades, the 152 lots include 15 examples by Tametaka Kitaemon, founder of the 18th century Nagoya school of carving. This wood netsuke of two shishi curled around each other signed Tametaka, Nagoya on the underside of one foot was formerly in the Harriet Szechenyi collection sold at Bonhams in 2011.
Estimate £15,000-20,000.