asian_ctc | Chiswick Auctions

With a busy autumn season in full swing, our November Asian Art sale - spanning over two days - will be the biggest of the year for our Saleroom!

The Asian Art department are thrilled to show you a preview of just a few of the most exciting lots coming up for sale.

A selection of Fine Chinese Paintings will be featured on 18 November, continuing our commitment to this field, and will include works by 20th Century giants Qi Baishi, Pu Ru as well as an album of Imperial flags by the Imperial Court artist Qingkuang.

Some highlights among the more than 1,000 lots for Asian Art include a massive blue and white Jiajing Imperial fishbowl with dragons coiled around the exterior, impressive Kangxi and Transitional vases including a rare soldier vase, and a range of Imperial and scholarly ceramics and works of art.

See below for more information on these extraordinary lots, for our final and biggest Asian Art sale of 2021.

- Lazarus Halstead, Head of Asian Art

“Navigating the Chinese art market can be a roller coaster ride. That old pot gathering dust on the mantlepiece, or those old scroll paintings rolled up in a cupboard might well hold the key to a six-figure fortune. Through meticulous research and a deep reservoir of potential clients, we are able to outgun our larger competitors and produce often astonishing results.”

Lazarus Halstead, Head of Asian Art.

A LARGE IMPERIAL CHINESE
BLUE AND WHITE ‘DRAGON’ FISHBOWL

QING DYNASTY, SIX CHARACTER JIAJING MARK AND OF THE PERIOD.

Heavily potted with deeply rounded sides, decorated with a continuous scene of two coiled dragons in pursuit among flames and large lotus heads and buds, interlinked with scrolling tendrils, all above a band of stylised lappets stopping just short of the unglazed base, the lipped rim decorated with a band of ruyi shaped clouds, with an in-line six character mark just below the rim.

48cm diameter.

£ 50,000 - 80,000

The combination of this motif and the form of a narrow tall basin on the present example is extremely rare and more commonly seen amongst Wanli examples. The scale and vividness of the painting make it an extremely fine example of late Ming Imperial ceramics.

A CHINESE HUANGHUALI
BRUSH POT, BITONG

17TH CENTURY

The plain, gently tapered cylindrical body, with a fine polish emphasising the wood grain displaying 'ghost face' knots and the underside with a circular hole filled with a plug.

16cm diameter, 16.5cm H.

£ 1,000 - 2,000

A symbol of his refinement and taste, the brush pot is an essential element of the Chinese literati scholar’s desk. The pared back aesthetic of the present lot perfectly draws out the beauty of the natural grains and humanoid faces.

The figuration and abstraction of natural form creates a sympathy between human experience and the natural world - which speaks across culture and time. Many have commented on how the ghostly faces recall Edvard Munch’s The Scream, giving such brush pots a wide-ranging appeal for contemporary collectors.

The items that would once have graced the desk of the Chinese literati-artist-scholar’s desk of the past are now, and have long been, a hot collecting market within the broader field of Chinese art.

A PAIR OF CHINESE DOUCAI ‘BOUQUET’ BOWLS

QING DYNASTY

Each with a flared body painted in polychrome enamels with bunches of blossoms among arabesque scrolls beneath a band of ruyi heads to the rim, a single bouquet within floral borders to the centre, the underside with an underglaze blue six character Yongzheng reign mark encircled by a double band.

15cm diameter, 6cm H. (2)

These bowls exemplify the high Imperial taste of the 18th century with their subtle colouring and intricately laid out floral patterns. The enamels of the Yongzheng period are particularly well regarded and in the doucai palette are combined with a blue underglaze, creating a subtle interplay of different tones and depths.

They embody the delicate refinement of the Imperial aesthetic on an intimate scale, which fits precisely into the category of ‘Chinese taste’, a driving force in current collecting trends.

QINGKUANG

(FL. LATE 19TH CENTURY)

DA QING GUO CHUSHI WANG FAYAN TUCE

An album of eleven Imperial flag designs each depicting a five clawed dragon below a rank badge, ink and colour heightened by gilt, on silk, eleven album leaves each depicting a flag relating to a particular rank, wooden boards mounted in silk brocade, a hand-written annotation providing the date 1901.

36 x 26.5cm.

£ 30,000 – 50,000

Complete albums produced by the Qing Imperial court are exceptionally rare. This work takes the viewer to the centre of late Imperial power, showing the differentiation of ranks who were sent abroad to represent Imperial state power. This was set against a backdrop of international upheaval with the Boxer Protocol putting China into unfavourable contracts with Western powers - so this album would have been one of the last manifestations of Imperial court art before the great Qing Dynasty fell in 1912.