Footnotes

十八世紀 顧繡蟠桃會圖軸
「露香園」「青碧齋」印

Published, Illustrated and Exhibited: The Oriental Art Gallery Ltd., Oriental Works of Art, London, 1994, no.131

展覽著錄： The Oriental Art Gallery Ltd.，《Oriental Works of Art》，倫敦，1994年，編號131

The inscription reads:

仙家甲子蟠桃會共祝霞齡日月眠

Which may be translated as:

The Immortals gather at the Peach Banquet to wish for the longevity of Xialing, enduring as the sun and moon.

The present lot is executed in the style of Gu Embroidery (顧繡), a renowned school of embroidery founded by Ms Miu (繆氏), a concubine of Gu Huihai (顧匯海), the son of Gu Mingshi (顧名世), a Jinshi degree holder of Songjiang Prefecture (present-day Shanghai) during the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty. Unique among Jiangnan embroidery traditions, Gu Embroidery was the only school named after a family and flourished under the artistic influence of Han Ximeng (韓希孟), the granddaughter-in-law of Gu Mingshi. A highly skilled painter, Han refined stitching techniques and colour application, significantly elevating the artistic quality of this embroidery style.

Gu Embroidery pioneered several innovations, including the use of underpainting beneath embroidered areas to enhance depth and tonal variation, as well as the development of the 'hairy stitch' method, which minimized the visual disruption of stitches on the delicate silk ground. Due to its painterly aesthetic and seamless integration of embroidery with painting techniques, Gu Embroidery became widely known as 'painting embroidery' (huaxiu 畫繡).

See details of two related hanging scrolls of the Queen Mother of the West and the God of Longevity in the Gu family style, Ming dynasty, illustrated in Masterpieces of Chinese Silk Tapestry and Embroidery in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1971, pl.34 and 35. See also a related 'deer in a landscape' silk scroll attributed to a member of the Gu family, 17th century, which was sold at Bonhams Hong Kong, 31 October 2023, lot 361.