Lot 16. A Yue celadon 'Chimera' candle-holder, Jin dynasty, 3rd-4th century BC. Hauteur : 8,4 cm ; Longueur : 13,5 cm. Vendu : EUR 11,340 (Estimation : EUR 10,000 – EUR 15,000). © Christie's Images Ltd 2023

Provenance: Formerly in a private American collection.
Purchased at Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, c. 1950.
Purchased at Yamanaka & Co., New York, prior to 1965.

Note: A similar example found at Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, is illustrated by Bo Gyllensvärd in Chinese Ceramics in the Carl Kempe Collection, no. 16, p. 29, illustration opposite p. 28; three others of this model are illustrated by Uragami Sokyu-do Co., Ltd., in their exhibition, Yue Animal Kingdom, 2007, nos. 16, 18 and 21; another, gift of C. Loo, in the Musée Guimet, Paris, is illustrated by Albert Le Bonheur and Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt in "The World’s Great Collections", Oriental Ceramics, Vol. 7, no. 14; another is illustrated in the catalogue of Special Exhibition, MOA Museum of Art, 2005, no. 19, p. 14; another is illustrated by Li Huibing in Porcelain of the Jin and Tang Dynasties, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Beijing, no. 25, p. 29; another from the Art Management Bureau, Shangyu, Zhejiang Province, is illustrated by Prof. Liu Liang-yu in Early Wares: Prehistoric to Tenth Century, A Survey of Chinese Ceramics, p. 138.
There are several different models of this type with varying complexity to the design. A closely related example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Adele and Stanley Herzman, is illustrated by Suzanne G. Valenstein in The Herzman Collection of Chinese Ceramics, no. 2, p. 13; another in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, is illustrated by He Li in Chinese Ceramics, A New Comprehensive Survey, no. 108, p. 117.
A related example with a figure on its back and a receptacle above the figure’s head is illustrated by Regina Krahl in Chinese Ceramics from the Meiyintang Collection, Volume Three (II), no. 1340, p. 332, where the author notes, “The lion-animal known as a bixie flashes its teeth. It has a massive head with small ears, a long beard and whiskers, its powerful body reclines on short legs and it has an elaborate cascading tail.” It also notes, “one with the figure largely missing, excavated from a Western Jin tomb in Jurong County, Jiangsu Province, dated in accordance with AD294, see Jiangsu Liuchao qingci, 1980, pl. 56.”

Christie's. ART D'ASIE, Paris, 12 december 2023