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Chinese jar sets record for Asian art

LONDON — A Chinese porcelain jar of the 14th century, painted in blue on a white background with scenes relating to events that took place in the sixth century B.C., was sold Tuesday for £15.68 million, or $27.7 million. It thus set a world auction record for any work of art from any Asian culture.

The successful bidder was the world's leading dealer in early Chinese art, Giuseppe Eskenazi, acting on behalf of a private buyer.

The previous highest auction price ever for Chinese porcelain was paid on Sept. 16, 2003, at Doyle's, New York, when another blue and white vessel of the 14th century, a so-called pilgrim flask, was sold for $5.83 million.

The figure reached Tuesday, after a prolonged duel pitching Eskenazi against a telephone bidder, multiplied by 10 Christie's very timid estimate, quoted verbally before the sale. It doubled what informed art professionals expected it to sell for.

The extraordinary price in part reflects the extraordinary character of the object. The heavily potted jar belongs to a very small group of jars, vases and bowls produced under the Mongol dynasty of the Yuan (1279-1368) between the 1330s and 1370s.

Only seven other jars of this shape, which reproduces a model borrowed from the Iranian world, have been recorded.

The jar sold at Christie's on Tuesday illustrates episodes relating to events that took place during the "Warring States" period. They are recounted in "The History of the Warring States," a historical chroniclecomposed in the early 14th century and printed in the years 1321 to 1323. The only copy dating from the 1320s that is known to survive is now in Japan, in the Naikaku Bunko, a government library in Tokyo.

Rosemary Scott, the British scholar and consultant to Christie's Asian department who identified the scene, reproduces in her introductory essay the double page in which the scene is illustrated. Readers of the catalogue are thus able to verify for themselves how closely the porcelain jar follows the printed model. This is particularly striking in the scene depicting General Wang Yi, known as Guiguzi, who is seated in a two-wheel chariot drawn by a tiger and a leopard.

No other example of this scene is illustrated on porcelain vessels. The chronicle in which it is recounted belongs to the genre of popular history mixing reality and tales that thrived in Yuan China when there was amood of revenge against foreign occupation — the Yuan dynasty was thrust upon the country by the Mongol conquerors.

A similar factor may have had its part in goading Chinese bidding, with out which the phenomenal price paidwould not have been achieved.

The very provenance of the jar further stung Chinese pride. Christie's wrote that the jar was acquired in China during the first quarter of the 20th century by Captain Baron Haro van Hemert tot Dingshof (1879-1972), who was in the Dutch marine corps and was stationed in Beijing from 1913 to 1923. A sea commander of the Netherlands Legation Guards Detachment, van Hemert was responsible for the security of the Dutch, German and Austro-Hungarian legations in their military enclaves. There could be no clearer reminder of the semicolonial regime that was then imposed by Western powers on a weakened China.

The jar was unrecorded until its publication in the Christie's catalogue. The revelation of its existence caused a sensation in international circles. Chinese passions were aroused. None of the seven other 14th-century blue and white jars of that model are present in the People's Republic of China. International professionals believe that a consortium was set up by a group of powerful Chinese buyers with the intention of bringing the Christie's jar back to China. They are thought to have been in the running to around £10 million.

From £10 million up, all the otherbidders battling against Eskenazi were Chinese, the London dealer said. But Eskenazi stuck to his guns. All he would say after the sale was that the buyer was "a Western collector of Chinese porcelain." This promises further auction battles and will contribute to deepening Chinese involvement in art purchasing.

International Herald Tribune

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