Bonhams to offer “The Hobart ‘Quail’ Bowls” in their Upcoming Auction
newsdepo.com
“The Hobart ‘Quail’ Bowls” will be featured at Bonhams’ upcoming auction, “Chinese Works of Art” that will be held on March 18, 2019, in New York. The pre-auction estimate of these valuable ceramic pieces of Yongzheng Imperial porcelain is $300,
Bonhams to offer “The Hobart ‘Quail’ Bowls” in their Upcoming Auction
“The Hobart ‘Quail’ Bowls” will be featured at Bonhams’ upcoming auction, “Chinese Works of Art” that will be held on March 18, 2019, in New York. The pre-auction estimate of these valuable ceramic pieces of Yongzheng Imperial porcelain is $300,000-500,000. “The important pair of ‘quail’ bowls, from the collection of Virginia ‘Ella’ Hobart (1876-1958), was acquired by Virginia Hobart in the early 20th-century, possibly from Yamanaka. Virginia Hobart became an heiress in 1892 when, with her two siblings, she inherited her father’s fortune from timber, gold, and silver mining. In 1913-1914, Virginia and her husband Charles Baldwin traveled to China and Japan, returning in time to attend the Pan-Pacific exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. In her letter to her son, dated January 29, 1913, she writes with great enthusiasm of meeting the famed dealer Sadajiro Yamanaka in Kyoto the day before. Following Charles’ death in 1936, Virginia sold Claremont Mansion in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which was built after the style of Versailles, and relocated to San Francisco,” states Bonhams, mentioning the provenance of these bowls. As the auction house states, these Hobart ‘Quail’ Bowls are the very finest Imperial porcelain of the Yongzheng reign and they represent its innovative design, unsurpassed elegance, and exquisite artistry. The auction house adds, “The palette of the superbly painted and enameled bowls can be described as a combination of falangcai and fencai; the former, translating as ‘foreign colors,’ and the latter corresponding to the ‘famille rose’ palette. The falangcai enamels are apparent on the present lot in the brown and ochre enameling of the quail. Related falangcai ‘quail’ decorated bowl and a teapot and cover, Yongzheng four-character blue-enameled marks and period, are in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.” Talking more about the quail bowls from this period that are a part of several private collections and museums, Bonhams says, “a bowl in the Art Institute of Chicago, Hongzhi, mark and period, which was later enameled in the Imperial ateliers during the Yongzheng reign; this bowl is remarkably similar to the Hobart bowls in the pearl-ground manner of enameling of the quail, as well as the continuous design over the rim and onto the interior of the bowl, and in the symbolic meaning of the design. A further Yongzheng mark and the period bowl is in the Foundation Baur, Geneva, and another similar bowl was formerly in the Meiyintang Collection.” https://www.blouinartinfo.com/ Founder: Louise Blouin Read more
