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Qing Bowl May Fetch HK$60 Million at
Christie's Hong Kong Sale
A Qing Dynasty porcelain bowl once owned
by the heiress Barbara Hutton may fetch at least HK$60 million ($7.7
million) at a Hong Kong sale next month of 2,502 paintings, ceramics and
gems by Christie's International Plc.
The bowl bears the mark of Emperor
Qianlong (1736-1795) and shows two swallows in flight beside a flowering
apricot tree, alluding to success at imperial examinations. In ancient
China, the imperial palace held nationwide examinations to choose court
officials, providing a way for commoners to scale the social ladder.
Christie's said the bowl is the only one
of its kind in private hands, part of a collection of 20 imperial ceramics
worth $20 million being sold by the China-born art dealer Robert Chang.
Chang bought the bowl from another dealer, J.T. Tai, in 1985 for HK$1.1
million, according to Christie's.
Hutton, dubbed ``Poor Little Rich Girl''
for her turbulent life, auctioned the item in the early 1970s after she was
taken ill and needed money to foot medical bills, the company said. Hutton,
the granddaughter of Frank W. Woolworth, who founded the Woolworth store
chain, died in 1979.
``Ceramics are tangible and portable,''
said Pola Antebi, a Hong Kong-based senior vice president at Christie's, in
an interview. ``As investments, many consider them more reliable than
commodities, and certainly more portable than real estate.''
China's decade-long economic growth has
swollen the ranks of wealthy collectors willing to splurge on luxury items.
The number of people with $1 million or more in China rose 6.7 percent last
year to 320,000, a report by Merrill Lynch & Co. and Cap Gemini SA
showed. Alternative investments, including art, accounted for a third of the
total assets of rich Chinese, higher than real estate, bonds or shares,
according to the report.
``Slave and Lion''
On Oct. 7, a businessman from the
southwestern Chinese city of Xiamen paid HK$116.6 million for a Ming Dynasty
Shakyamuni Buddha bronze statue at Sotheby's Holdings Inc.'s Hong Kong sale,
a record for a Chinese work of art, aside from ceramics.
``With paintings, one worries about
humidity and insects, such as termites,'' Antebi said. ``Ceramics are pretty
durable, although one has to be careful of the overly athletic cleaner.''
Other highlights at Christie's auction
include a 1924 Xu Beihong painting ``Slave and Lion'', expected to fetch
HK$32 million, a record for the artist. The 1993 Zhang Xiaogang painting ``Tiananmen
Square'' may fetch HK$3 million and a 37.5 carat Burmese ruby, the largest
offered in Asia, may sell for HK$12 million, according to Christie's.
The five-day auction starting on Nov. 25
may fetch a combined HK$1.1 billion, according to Christie's. Sotheby's
four-day auction on Oct. 6-9 raised HK$1.07 billion. -
by Le-Min Lim BLOOMBERG
26 October 2006
Chinese buyers show cool aplomb at
Asia sales
NEW YORK : The Chinese art market
is changing as fast as the economy of the new world giant. A daylong auction
of Chinese works of art held at Christie's differed in almost every respect
from the sales held here during Asia Week in late March.
The only common denominator is the
abundance of Chinese cash when it comes to buying art. But the age of
extravagant exuberance is gone. Although many new faces could be seen among
Chinese bidders on Tuesday, there were no uncouth newcomers from the
mainland unfamiliar with the auction world. Cool determination summed up the
Chinese attitude.
Duds of ill-determined age belonging to
the categories traditionally sought after were often ignored. A jade vessel
in the form of a bird inspired by a bronze vessel of the 12th century B.C.
in a Western museum dropped dead without attracting a single bid. But the
moment desirable works appeared, competition flared up. An early show of
enthusiasm broke out over an 18th-century seal paste box exquisitely carved
out of soapstone. Graced with the signature of Zhou Bin, renowned for his
seal carvings, it shot up to $50,400, more than five times the high
estimate.
Homage was duly paid to the few
rhinoceros horn vessels - it is hard to resist a medium credited with
aphrodisiac virtues. Brushpots, the required badge of respectability to
those keen to acquire the trappings of Mandarin culture, were fought over. A
zitan wood brushpot of square section improbably rose to $15,600.
However, when the more ambitious lots
came up, Chinese punters displayed greater self-control.
The first extraordinary pieces offered
that day, a pair of circular red lacquer boxes of the 18th century from the
estate of two famous American collectors, Ira Koger and his wife, Nancy,
seemed bound to excite them. The motifs carved with brio were dominated on
each box by a bold ideogram for "spring" that encloses the figure
of Shoulao, the deity of longevity. Below, a basket is filled with
auspicious symbols. The Chinese tried hard, but eventually it was the
Japanese collector Iketani Ikemasa who carried the rare prize for $216,000,
almost two and a half times the high estimate.
This was a passing weakness. Chinese
bidders did not miss on the next major lot of red lacquer, two magnificent
panels carved with a mountainous landscape under the Qianlong emperor
(1736-1795). A Hong Kong private collector paid $180,000 for the pair.
As in other recent sales, the Chinese
proved that they are now prepared to go after works of art that fall outside
their traditional collecting patterns.
The most spectacular case concerns a very
large blue and white decanter of which the tubular neck has been sawn off.
Ascribed by Christie's to the Xuande period (1426-1435), its authenticity
raised questions in the minds of leading Western dealers who held back. Not
so their Chinese colleagues, who ran it up to an amazing $2.2 million.
William Chak, the Hong Kong dealer who bought it, told me after the sale
that he had owned the piece in the 1980s and sold it to another Hong Kong
dealer, who in turn sold it to Japan.
Chak also paid $441,600 for a fine blue
and white dish of the early 15th century. Its recipient will be a young
Shanghai collector.
The old prejudice that prevailed among
collectors cast in the Mandarin mold has clearly gone. Blue and white
porcelain that appeared in the mid-14th century after the Mongol conquest of
China and Iran, introduced new shapes and patterns, larger sizes - and a new
color, "Iranian" blue. Long perceived by the Chinese as alien to
their purest tradition, but avidly sought after by Western and Japanese
connoisseurs, these are now targeted by Chinese collectors as part and
parcel of their heritage.
So are early cloisonné enamels that also
appeared quite suddenly around the late 14th century. On Tuesday, an
admirable but small circular box of the early 15th century cost a collector
from Taiwan a handsome $168,000.
The most revolutionary break with
traditional collecting concerns religious sculpture long considered taboo
because its removal from shrines is sacrilegious. Here, too, the feeling now
prevails that acquiring it is safeguarding parts of the artistic heritage
that went astray during the looting of China in the 20th century. At
Christie's, the most important sculpture, a standing figure of the Buddhist
deity Guanyin, carved in the 12th or early 13th century, rose to $744,000.
It is now on its way to Los Angeles where the Taiwanese collector Dr. Tc
Chen spends much of his time.
Despite their formidable advance, the
Chinese do not yet dominate the international market for their art.
The rarest object at Christie's was a
jade beaker of the 2nd century B.C. Of the five known pieces related to it,
none has the exquisite linear pattern lightly wrought on the sides, nor the
copper mount inlaid with gold and silver around the mouth.
The jade vessel that came from the
collection amassed in Chicago by the late Stephen Junkunc 3rd had been
wheedled out of his heir's hands by Theow Tow, deputy chairman of Christie's
Asia and Americas. Estimated to be worth $500,000 to $600,000, it was
knocked down to $750,000 - bringing the price with a sale charge to $856,000
- to Giuseppe Eskenazi, the world's leading connoisseur dealer in early
Chinese art. The beaker will go to a European collector.
The jade vessel that came from the
collection amassed in Chicago by the late Stephen Junkunc 3rd had been
wheedled out of his heir's hands by Theow Tow, deputy chairman of Christie's
Asia and Americas. Estimated to be worth $500,000 to $600,000, it was
knocked down to $750,000 - bringing the price with a sale charge to $856,000
- to Giuseppe Eskenazi, the world's leading connoisseur dealer in early
Chinese art. The beaker will go to a European collector.
Western buyers remained active all the
way down the price scale. A ravishing octagonal black lacquer stand
decorated with a riverside landscape in mother-of-pearl inlay went to the
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art of the University of Florida in Gainesville -
at $21,600 it was a giveaway.
Later, I watched Chris Knapton and Nader
Rasti of London as they paid on behalf of a client $21,600 (again) for two
exquisite small porcelain dishes painted shortly before 1700 with stylized
blue and white landscapes. Stuart Marchant of London, the son and business
partner of the famous dealer Richard Marchant, sat next to me and bought
with evident glee a Kangxi period famille verte vase.
The balance between the Chinese offensive
to buy back their art and Western acquisitions remained much the same on
Thursday, when Sotheby's took over with a sale that was otherwise
spectacularly different in its makeup. Eager to catch up with Christie's,
which is running ahead in New York, Sotheby's had gambled by taking in
several big lots, some with optimistic estimates concealing high reserves,
others perhaps without scrutinizing the objects quite closely enough. The
auction house won some, brilliantly, and lost others, disastrously.
An extraordinary rhinoceros horn carved
in the shape of a log raft with the signature seal of You Kan, active
between 1660 and 1720, more than doubled its (ambitious) estimate as it
brought $2 million. About 10 Chinese bidders jumped into the fray. All
eventually conceded defeat, leaving the field to a telephone bidder believed
to be also Chinese.
But when came some equally rare pieces
such as an exceptionally large mid-6th century vase, decorated with lion
masks and other motifs under an olive glaze, it was the turn of Western
bidders to dig in their heels. James Lally of New York, the leading American
dealer in early Chinese art, paid the $475,200 it took to carry the prize.
Sotheby's experts were less lucky with
their star lot, two Tang horses and their grooms, which remained unsold at
$650,000. They were even more unfortunate with some archaic bronzes of which
three, including a tapir, were withdrawn after a leading international
dealer warned two famous American collectors that their authenticity was
questionable. I understand that the three were subjected to lab tests that
backed the dealer's judgment. The tapir looked disturbingly convincing in
the color views reproduced in the catalogue, where the estimate stood at
$500,000 to $700,000.
If a reminder was needed that one should
never buy an object on the strength of a catalogue description, this is it.
The best experts can trip up. Right now, the latest Chinese victory is the
art of imitating the past. They have carried it off to a frightening degree
of perfection. - By
Souren Melikian International
Herald Tribune 22 Sept 2006
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