Lot 8144. A fine cinnabar lacquer square brushpot, bitong, Qianlong four-character mark and of the period. Estimate US$10,000 - 15,000 (€9,200 - 14,000). Photo Bonhams.

Finely incised through deep layers of bright cinnabar lacquer with a continuous landscape scene across the four sides and chamfered corners depicting travelers greeting a farming boy riding a buffalo, a contemplative scholar accompanied by a servant with a qin, a gentleman cooling himself with a fan beside two boys playing and another scholar and boy traversing a low bridge, all in an intricately conceived idealized landscape of pine and wutong groves, rocky mountains and rivers stretching into far vistas, a narrow key-fret border carved immediately below the replacement yellow metal mount to the rim and repeated above the black lacquered base with three of four surviving low feet surrounding the incised mark at the center colored with gilt pigment. 5 3/8in (13.6cm) high

Provenance: A private Denver, Colorado collection
Henry White Warren (1831-1912), Methodist Episcopal bishop and co-founder of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, by repute

Notes: For comparable cinnabar lacquer brush pots in the Qing Court Collection, see Gugong Bowuyuan Cang Wenwu Zhenpin Quanji 46: Qingdai Qiqi (The Complete Collection of the Treasures of the Palace Museum 46: Lacquer Wares of the Qing Dynasty), the first a five-lobed brush pot with flowers, imperial poems and similar key-fret bands to the edges, as Qianlong period, no. 23, pp.36-37; and a square-sectioned example with canted corners and figures in landscapes framed by a key-fret border, no. 42, pp. 62-63. See also a similar gilt four-character mark carved to the base of a red lacquer box displaying a hundred children at play, no. 19, pp. 18-29.

A closely related lacquer brushpot, dated to the Qianlong period, is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 13.100.147, acquired with the John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1913. It is interesting to note the close similarity of deeply incised carving styles and subject matter: the museum brushpot also depicts a scholar and a boy with a qin, gentlemen and boys relaxing, and travelers amid groves and rivers, although the four scenes are contained within cartouches framed by foliate scrolls. The subject matter of both the present lot and the museum example exhibit the fascination of the scholarly class with the Daoist ideal of retirement from public service to dwell in the mountains and contemplate nature. As such it would have provided a means of brief escape and relaxation from his Confucian duties for scholar-official whose desk it adorned.

Another related lacquer brushpot dated to the Qianlong period sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong, 8 April 2010, sale HK0323, lot 1931. 

Bonhams. CHINESE WORKS OF ART, 11:00 EDT - NEW YORK