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Eloge de l'Art par Alain Truong
9 octobre 2010

A rhinoceros horn libation cup, by Hu Xingyue. Qing dynasty, Qianlong period

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A rhinoceros horn libation cup, by Hu Xingyue. Qing dynasty, Qianlong period.. photo courtesy Sotheby's

superbly carved in high-relief with several chilong dragons clambering about the body, a group forming the handle and two more on the exterior of the spout, the body with a central band of taotie masks carved in shallow relief against a leiwen ground, encircled on both sides of the lip with a leiwen border repeated on the footrim, the deeply inset base signed Hu Xingyue, the horn of rich, even-toned honey-brown colour; length 19 cm., 7 1/2 in. - Estimate 4,500,000—6,500,000 HKD. Lot Sold 5,420,000 HKD

PROVENANCE: Sydney L. Moss Ltd.
Collection of Mary and George Bloch.
Sotheby's Hong Kong, 23rd October 2005, lot 42.

NOTE: Although there appears to be no official recording of Hu Xingyue, his work is relatively well known and his seal mark can be found on a number of vessels. Jan Chapman in The Art of Rhinoceros Horn Carving in China, London, 1999, p. 129, discusses Hu and notes that he probably worked in the 18th century and signed his work by adding a square four-character seal mark in the archaistic style, as seen on the present finely worked cup and on another archaistic cup in the Museum voor Volkenkunde, Rotterdam, illustrated ibid., pl. 134. Chapman also mentions (ibid., p. 129) that Hu did not always carve the four characters in the same sequence but is known to have written the characters counterclockwise as well. Sydney L. Moss in his catalogue for the exhibition Emperor, Scholar, Artisan, Monk: The Creative Personality in Chinese Work of Art, London, 1984, p. 184, lists ten pieces with Hu's seal mark in various museums and private collections and illustrates a rhinoceros horn cup decorated with dragons and prunus, pl. 59, as an example.

Compare a closely related cup finely carved with a similar leiwen pattern around the foot and rim and with a group of chilong forming the handle, sold at Christie's London, 10th December 1979, lot 239; another included in The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Bamboo, Wood, Ivory and Rhinoceros Horn Carving, Shanghai, 2001, pl. 133; and a third example formerly in the Sloane collection and now in the British Museum, London, published in Derek Gillman, 'A source of rhinoceros horn cups in the late Ming dynasty', Orientations, December 1984, p. 13, fig. 5 above.

See also a cup of similar elegantly proportioned form and closely related decoration, from the collection of Gary Mack, New York, included in the exhibition Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth: Gems of Antiquities Collection in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong, 2002, and also illustrated in Thomas Fok, Connoisseurship of Rhinoceros Horn Carving in China, Hong Kong, 1999, p. 60, no. 13.

Sotheby's. Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection - Scholarly Art. 08 Oct 10. Hong Kong www.sothebys.com

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