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PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF ROBERT P. YOUNGMAN
Lot 9
An olive-green, beige and russet Jade Figure of a crouching Bear Shang Dynasty (circa. 1600-1100 BCE)
15 March 2021, 10:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$31,562.50 inc. premium
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An olive-green, beige and russet Jade Figure of a crouching Bear
Shang Dynasty (circa. 1600-1100 BCE)
The bear seated on its rear haunches in a crouching position with forelegs resting on the knees of the drawn-in rear legs, the bear's large head with wide mouth resting on the forelegs, the eyes cut in low-relief below simple rounded ears, the rounded body cut with ridged channels of scrolls, a short hole drilled to the back of the head.
1 5/8in (4.2cm) high
The bear seated on its rear haunches in a crouching position with forelegs resting on the knees of the drawn-in rear legs, the bear's large head with wide mouth resting on the forelegs, the eyes cut in low-relief below simple rounded ears, the rounded body cut with ridged channels of scrolls, a short hole drilled to the back of the head.
1 5/8in (4.2cm) high
Footnotes
商 玉熊
PROVENANCE
Sotheby's, Hong Kong, The Robert Youngman Collection of Chinese Jade, 3 April 2019, lot 3419
Alvin Lo Oriental Art Ltd., New York
PUBLISHED
Robert P. Youngman, The Youngman Collection of Chinese Jades from the Neolithic to Qing, Chicago, 2008, pl. 32
來源
蘇富比香港，楊門中國玉器珍藏，2019年4月3日，拍品編號3419
Alvin Lo Oriental Art Ltd., 紐約
出版
羅伯特．楊門，《楊門藏玉：中國玉器．新石器時代至清代》，芝加哥，2008年，圖版32
For a very similar jade bear formerly in the Rafi Y. Mottahedeh Collection and dated to the Shang dynasty, see Sotheby's, New York, 4 November 1978, lot 162. Similarly positioned, it too had a small hole drilled to the back of the head. It had previously been published and exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the ground-breaking jade retrospective Chinese Jade Throughout the Ages May-June, 1975, p. 35, no. 44. It was also published by S.H. Hansford, Chinese Jade Carving, London and Bradford, 1950, pl. XXVa. and again in Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, 1973-74/1974-75, London, 1976, (a special edition for the Victoria and Albert Museum Exhibiton), p. 35, no. 44, where its owner is listed as Mr John M Crawford Jr.
Two jade bears from a Western Zhou Dynasty tomb of the Marquis of Jin and his wife in Shanxi province are illustrated in Zhongguo chutu yuqi quanji, vol. 3, pls. 125 and 126. See also a similar jade crouching bear from the M. Calmann Collection, Paris, illustrated in International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935-36, no. 283.
See the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 1973/1974, Volume XXXII, No. 2 in an article by Maxwell Hearn and Wen Fong entitled 'The Arts of China, The Age of Ritual: The Shang Dynasty' for a depiction of a marble bear (4 1/2 inches high) in a very similar crouching pose, though devoid of surface decoration and dated to the 13th - 11th Century BCE (Illustration no. 7).
For a Shang dynasty buffalo also carved in the round, using a similar jade material and with related relief scroll decoration, see Max Loehr, Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts, 1975, p. 123, no. 148. Later in the same publication, a crouching bear is illustrated that entered the Collection in 1943 that is dated to 'probably' the Western Zhou period. It too bears close comparison.
For other small figural jade carvings of similar size, format and decoration, see China: 5,000 Years: Innovation and Transformation in the Arts, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998, p. 208, no. 10 (1 & 2) both unearthed in 1976 from Fu Hao tomb No. 5, Anyang, Henan province and now in the Henan Provincial Museum, Zhengzhou.
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