Lot 6038 An exceptional imperial yellow and russet jade boulder, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period | 清乾隆　黃玉世外桃源山子

An exceptional imperial yellow and russet jade boulder, Qing dynasty, Qianlong period | 清乾隆　黃玉世外桃源山子

HKD 3,000,000

3,000,000 - 9,000,000 HKD

未知

如欲了解本拍品狀況的更多資訊，請聯絡 Rubie.Fong@sothebys.com

with original wood stand
26 cm
来源：Collection of Madame Florine Langweil (1861–1958).
Collection de Madame Langweil. Objets d’art de la Chine, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 5th June 1959, lot 177 (unillustrated).
Jean-Marc Delvaux, 12th June 2013, lot 87 and cover.
图录
说明：來源
Florine Langweil 夫人（1861–1958年）收藏
《Collection de Madame Langweil. Objets d’art de la Chine》，Galerie Charpentier，巴黎，1959年6月5日，編號177（沒載圖）
Jean-Marc Delvaux，2013年6月12日，編號87及封面
A mountain in miniature, this massive jade boulder turns years of labour, quarrying, transport and painstaking carving, into a fantasy of seclusion. A deep grotto cuts into the stone, with a lone fisherman mooring his boat at its mouth, as if he has just arrived and is about to enter whatever lies beyond. An eighteenth-century viewer would have recognised the reference to Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring: the tale of a fisherman who discovers an earthly paradise hidden beyond a cave, only for the entrance to disappear when he later tries to find it again.
The opening teases the paradise beyond while flaunting the carver’s sheer skill in cutting so deeply into such a costly material. Rather than revealing the paradise itself, the scene leaves us at the moment before entry. Such an image would have been especially fitting in a studio, study or private chamber, where it could be enjoyed away from the noise and disorder of daily life: a place for the mind to wander, all within a miniature mountain.
The largest yellow jade boulder yet recorded, this extraordinary boulder is matched in presence and grandeur by a distinguished history of ownership, leading from the Qing imperial court to the celebrated Parisian dealer Madame Florine Langweil (1861–1958), who became one of the leading European specialists in Chinese and Japanese art in the early 20th century. The earliest known record of the boulder is its inclusion in the 1959 sale of her collection at Galerie Charpentier, by which time it had travelled halfway across the globe, around a century after it was made for the imperial court.
Madame Langweil’s importance extends well beyond this boulder. Important jades and imperial seals passed through her hands, among them imperial jade seals that Émile Guimet acquired directly from her. One was later presented by Guimet to the Empress Dowager Cixi, while several important seals have since set new benchmarks, including the exceptional Qianlong Yubi seal, one of the largest imperial white jade seals known from the Qing dynasty, which was sold in these rooms, 7th May 2025, lot 3543; the Jiaqing imperial white jade seal sold in our Paris rooms, 15th June 2023, lot 1; and the pair of Daoguang Yubi jade seals sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 1st June 2017, lot 577.