Printed from Woolley & Wallis

Description

TWO CHINESE FAHUA-STYLE TURQUOISE-GROUND SNUFF BOTTLES
19TH CENTURY

6.3cm. (2)

From the collection of William Cleverley Alexander (1840-1916).

Both moulded with flowering lotus.

William Cleverley Alexander (1840-1916) was one of the most noted connoisseurs of his day. He was an accomplished draughtsman, a member of the Burlington Fine Arts Club and a founding member of the National Art Collections Fund, and was renowned for his taste in Western paintings and Asian works of art. This acclaim was noted in William Alexander's obituary written in 1916 by the British artist and critic Roger Fry who noted the remarkable good taste which guided Alexander’s acquisition of the pieces in his collection. The collection was started in 1867 and included items from the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties. He loaned items from his collection to a number of important exhibitions, including the Burlington Arts Club exhibitions in 1895, 1896 and 1910, and the ground-breaking exhibition of Chinese Applied Art held at the City of Manchester Art Gallery in 1913. He was also an early patron of James McNeill Whistler. A large portion of his collection of Chinese ceramics collection was sold by Alexander's daughters at Sotheby's in 1931 and an important Yuan dynasty gourd-shaped vase was sold in these rooms in 2005. For further details about The Alexander Collection see Hobson, Rackham and King, Chinese Ceramics in Private Collections, where 58 pieces from the collection are illustrated.