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Lot 67
A REVERSE GLASS MIRROR PAINTING OF TWO ELEGANT LADIES SEATED IN A RIVER LANDSCAPE 18th century
14 December 2023, 17:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$5,760 inc. premium
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I-Hsuan Chen
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A REVERSE GLASS MIRROR PAINTING OF TWO ELEGANT LADIES SEATED IN A RIVER LANDSCAPE
18th century
Of horizontal format and depicting in the near right foreground an elegant Han lady in pink and white robes with a blue sash and a younger female companion in blue holding a posy, both seated on a rocky bank alongside a fast-flowing river with boats and a pagoda in the distance below scudding clouds in a blue sky.
the mirror 13in (33.1cm) x 18in (45.8cm), framed
Of horizontal format and depicting in the near right foreground an elegant Han lady in pink and white robes with a blue sash and a younger female companion in blue holding a posy, both seated on a rocky bank alongside a fast-flowing river with boats and a pagoda in the distance below scudding clouds in a blue sky.
the mirror 13in (33.1cm) x 18in (45.8cm), framed
Footnotes
十八世紀 山水人物玻璃鏡畫
For a number of reverse glass paintings of similar type, one pair from the Corning Museum of Glass, New York, see Francine Giese, Hans Bjarne Thomsen, Elisa Ambrosio, and Alina Martimyanova (Eds.), China and the West, Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting, Berlin and Boston, 2023, Chapter 2, Christopher L. Maxwell 'People in Glass Houses, The Polite and Polished in Georgian Britain', p. 34, fig. 1, for a pair painted in Canton between 1750–1800 (The Corning Museum of Glass, accession no. 2019.6.15.) where the author notes:
"From its origins within the Roman Empire during the 3rd or 4th century CE, the technique of reverse painting on glass evolved into numerous types and, by the medieval period, its various manifestations enjoyed prestige throughout Europe, particularly in the territories of modern-day Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It was probably in the late seventeenth century that European reverse-painted mirrors, and the attendant techniques, reached China. Although the production of plate glass (both clear and mirrored) in China during the eighteenth century remained limited, by the middle of the century not only was reverse painting on glass well established at the Imperial Court in Beijing, but Chinese painters had mastered the technique to such a degree that their work on imported mirror glass had not only generated a market in China, but it was also in high demand back in Europe, and particularly in Britain."
See also, op. cit., Chapter 10, Patricia F. Ferguson, 'Reflecting Asia, The Reception of Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings in Britain, 1738-1770', p. 158, fig. 1, another reverse glass mirror painting depicting 'Two Women Reading with Maid-servant by the Water's Edge', and dated to Canton in the mid-eighteenth century.