Description
A Massive Chinese Mottled-Grey Jade Carving of a Recumbent Water Buffalo, Qing dynasty, 18th/19th century, 29.5cm.
Carved from an enormous grey-green boulder dappled with darker more vivid and with paler mottling. The beast lies on its side with its head turned to the left which is resting on a front leg. The face has a pleasing contented expression with well defined eyes and nose, and with the horns curling around the neck. The coat is carved with loosely fitting skin through which the ribs and vertebrae are visible. The finely incised tail is thrown over massive haunches; the hooves are all well defined.
Provenance
The Hon. Mrs Mary Anna Marten OBE (1929-2010), Crichel House, Dorset. Purchased prior to 1953.
Exhibited
Chinese Jade Throughout the Ages, an exhibition organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Oriental Ceramic Society, May - June 1975, Victoria and Albert Museum, catalogue no.396, where it is described as Ming dynasty.
Catalogue note
For other massive jade carvings of Water buffaloes, cf. Chinese Jade Throughout the Ages, an exhibition organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Oriental Ceramic Society, May - June 1975, Victoria and Albert Museum, no.395 and 397, the latter from the collection of Somerset de Chair. In the introduction to chapter XIX, Large Animal, Ming and Ch'ing Periods, they are discussed as being:
'among the most ambitious and monumental examples of jade ever worked in China; and perhaps all of them once had their place in the pavilions and various palaces in Peking.'
See also J C S Lin, The Immortal Stone, Chinese Jades from the Neolithic Period to the Twentieth Century, pp.48-50.