A Large Famille Verte ‘Arrival Of Xiwangmu’ Brushpot, Bitong, Kangxi Period

So today we talk about block number 160 from our upcoming auction of fine Asian art, which includes a nice portion of Chinese porcelain. This is one of the finer pieces, or you could actually say this is one hell of a betong, one hell of a brush pot. It's very big, it's in extremely good condition, and it is from a very famous collector and dealer in Sweden, Emil Atberg, who was born in 1886 and passed away in 1974 when he was 88 years old. He founded his eponymous gallery together with his brother, I think in 1909 in Stockholm, so a long time ago. And when you go to the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm, or the famous Asian Art Museum, of course, you find many, many pieces that were acquired from the Atberg brothers. They started with Japanese art, and then a few years later went into Chinese art. And this comes from his personal collection, and it shows the arrival of Siwang Mu, the Queen Mother. Interestingly, she's depicted here with the face of an elderly woman. That is not the standard. She's often shown as a young woman, but here she looks really like an old woman. And she has here her young, accommodating figures, and she rides here on the cloud and on a crane, as you can see. And here you find the immortals, all of them together, waiting for her arrival. And they are surrounded by these neatly painted rocks, and there's a nice willow tree here, and there are pines here, and continuing rockwork. But still, if you look at the decor, it is quite sparse. It's not cluttered like the 19th-century pieces, yeah? Some people have thought this could also be a 19th-century piece. I had quite a few of the 18th-century pieces over time from the family like this one, and I can say that's the best one I've handled. And I think the most expensive one I sold was over 300,000 euros, so they're not... sometimes they were quite expensive. This one should do well. They only put 10,000 to 20,000 euros on it, so there's a good chance to acquire a really good one. I think one thing is important to understand about Kangxi Famivert Paintek on BeatDogs. You always have to look at the diagram of the painting, because it's supposed to be seen like a regular flat painting in traditional Chinese style, so it's more like a monumental panorama. And this is what you see here very clearly. It has a precise structure of depicting the group of Siwan Mu that is arriving, which is surrounded by these powerful iron-red clouds which always come in various shading, and sometimes even with some gilding like here. And the shadings are never... they're never like coming in spots or in clear areas. They're always graduated and always neatly manually applied. But the final composition is very powerful, yet floating or flying actually, like in this case, which is very difficult to achieve. There's another thing. Some of these Famivert pieces, or a lot of them actually, have a blue enameling with them. This one doesn't. Instead, this one has a two-tone aubergine, which is very, very rare. So you have this area here, which is pale aubergine, and then you have the dark sections here. They are sometimes blue, but in this case, it's also a dark version of this aubergine, which is achieved by adding simply a little bit more of the crystalline components to the glaze applied. So it gives essentially the same, but a deeper and darker color in firing. And there is one example that also had it here, a very famous one, that of course had an inscription also. So that is a different story, because inscribed ones are extremely rare. Sold for almost 700,000 euros. I think it was also part of a very important collection. That was in March 2019. I had a look at this one back then in New York, and it was spectacular. But it's one of the rare examples that has this two-tone aubergine, just like this one. So this is serious stuff, you know, not normal stuff. And also, when you look at the base, you see, well, everything that you need to see on a piece like that. There's other ones that, for instance, this one here, which was in 2011, sold for roughly 100,000 euros at Christie's. This one has the blue in it, but otherwise, it's pretty much identical size. There's also something, 15.2, I think, ours has, if I'm correct, yeah, 16 centimeters. So it's like one centimeter, give or take, but it's one from the larger group. There's many small ones around. Very few large ones, let alone in this absolute pristine condition. You have, of course, manufacturing irregularities, such as pitting. You have typical pitting. You have some killing grits in there, which no one ever has removed. You have some dark spots, also mostly to the inside. Whenever you get a lot of dark spots on the outside, I'd be careful, yeah, because typically, the people who copy these pieces, they tend to add more dark spots. You know, in the Kangxi period, they were all about having no dark spots at all. So the few ones, they were unavoidable. The more modern pieces, they have a lot of dark spots, and they have a lot of killing grit, and they have a lot of pitting. In this case, I'd be careful. But then it also compares to another, also with a similar size, 15.5 centimeters, which is from, and it's from Yijie. It's in the Gimé. I just saw it at my last Paris visit, which was less than two months ago. And interestingly, when I saw the one in the cabinet, and this one later, I thought the Grandiier piece is a bit larger, but turns out they're pretty much the same size. Yeah, they look more impressive when you put them in a cabinet than they look when you hold them in your hand. But they are bitongs, so you should have some brushes in there. They're quite expensive, too, if you want to have the period pieces. Probably if you fill it up, it will be more expensive than the bitong. But in any way, this has very old provenance, so there's not really a lot of discussion, and as I said, pristine condition. If you wanted a really good bitong, here's your chance. 10,000 the starting price, 20,000 the estimate. Could do well. It's always worth a try. If you want it, good luck in bidding, and I'll see you at the auction.