A COLLECTION OF FOURTY FIVE CHINESE MULTICOLOUR WOODBLOCK PRINTS FROM THE ‘TEN BAMBOO STUDIO AND THE MUSTARD SEED GARDEN.’

Late Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen period to Early Qing Dynasty, Kangxi period.

29 x 26cm. (45)

Provenance: Sotheby’s, 7 June 1994, Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art; collection of Henri Vever (1854-1942).

明崇禎至清康熙 石竹齋《芥子園圖譜》木板印刷四十五幅

來源：1994年6月7日蘇富比《中國重要瓷器及工藝品》拍賣；亨利·範(1854-1942)收藏。

Henri Vever (1854-1942) was one of the pre-eminent collectors of Chinese and Japanese art of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He made his name as a Parisian jeweller and was an important taste-maker of his day with the Oriental motifs drawn from his collecting passion making their way into the development of the Art Nouveau movement.

His Japanese print collection, exhibited in instalments at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs was later sold off, partly in the 1920s, and then in the landmark three-part sale at Sotheby’s in 1974. His Persian art collection was sold to the Smithsonian Institution in 1986.

The Chinese collection relates to Vever’s interest came out of his interest in Japanese prints although publications on Chinese art reproducing part of his collection show he also had an interest on figurative painting of the meirenhua genre.

Many of the prints contain annotations by Vever himself, some including the original price paid. This suggests that he built up the collection meticulously piece-by-piece and he conceived of each print as an individual artwork in its own right. It was Laurence Binyon, curator of the British Museum, who had in 1904 discovered a collection of Chinese multicolour prints from the collection of Dr Engelbert Kaempfer which had been acquired in the late 17th Century, which indicated to him – the first time it had been known in the West – that Chinese multicoloured prints of China significantly predated those of Japan. Thus for Vever, the prints of China held huge artistic significance and import. Some of the pieces from the collection may date as early as 1640, whilst others date to the 18th or 19th Century.