An Important and Early European-Market Namban-Style Painted Lacquer Six-Panel Screen

An Important and Early European-Market Namban-Style Painted Lacquer Six-Panel Screen.

The lacquer: 17th Century, Transitional or early Kangxi period. The brass mounts:  Anglo-Dutch, 17th Century

painted with a continuous scene of Europeans approaching in grand procession within canopied chariots through a mountainous landscape towards a large domed tent in which several noblemen confer amid playing dogs, attending servants and hunting entourage, bordered above and below with bands of flower bouquets and 'precious objects' and archaistic dragons or qilong, the reverse left plain, the end panels pierced through with Anglo-Dutch metalwork bail handles terminating in floret fittings, the sides secured with similar metalwork at the corners and Anglo-Dutch tooled leather straps, and a pair of metal duck-form screen weights. each panel: 77 x 15 in., 195.5 x 38 cm. Estimate 40,000—60,000 USD

PROVENANCE: Ellsworth & Goldie, New York, 1971.

NOTE: The present Moffo-Sarnoff screen is a very rare early example of Chinese lacquer made for the export market to Europe at a time when China was trying to re-establish itself in that trade after several years of Japanese dominance in the production of ceramics, silks, lacquer and metalwork suiting Western tastes. From 1550-1620 AD, China monopolized the export trade but as the Ming dynasty fell apart, intrepid Portuguese Jesuits and Anglo-Dutch merchantmen looked to Japan to supply their need for luxury goods. As such, Japanese goods from 1600-1660 AD executed in the 'Namban' (Southern Barbarian) style became extremely popular in the West; depicting hirsute Westerners in armor and baggy pantaloons, winged Dutch hats and ruff collars, flintlock rifles and triple-masted galleons, as seen through Eastern eyes. They captured the complex socio-political interface between the Orient and Occident at a time when essential concepts of 'native' or 'alien,' and 'civilized' culture was being formed in Western intellectual discourse.

The Qing perceived the world as a place of numerous rulers, and the Manchu ruler was positioned as the huangdi or 'supreme lord' overseeing the Earth and the Heavens. This world order was centered around the 'tribute system' as a means to keep the balance between the ruler and his subjects and guests. As a result, Europeans are invariably depicted paying tribute and thus symbolically incorporated into Chinese ritual order; this screen being no exception with the Europeans bearing gifts. Compare a slightly later coromandel screen dated 1674, with Europeans carrying tribute gifts to a gathering at a palace, illustrated in Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer, ed., Encounters, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2004, p. 208-209, fig. 16.6.

Probably made around 1630-50, the Moffo-Sarnoff screen betrays its early date in its small size, Japanese-inspired naïve depictions of Europeans, and Japanese-inspired color palette in which brocade-patterned golds and oranges are strongly dominant. In contrast, the border patterns of bands of mythical dragons and large bouquets of flowers remain strongly Chinese in style and execution. Compare a later twelve-panel Chinese coromandel screen in the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, dating to the second half of the seventeenth century, featuring a Dutch hunting party with a trading ship on the left.

Sotheby's. Chinese Works of Art. 17 Mar 09.New York www.sothebys.com Photo courtesy Sotheby's