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A Chinese album with paintings of Envoys Presenting Tribute 职贡图(Zhigong tu), probably 17thCentury, after an old master.

Estimate
80 000 - 120 000 SEK
7 070 - 10 600 EUR
7 240 - 10 900 USD
Hammer price
175 000 SEK
Purchasing info
For condition report contact specialist
Cecilia Nordström
Stockholm
Cecilia Nordström
Senior specialist Asian Ceramics and Works of Art, European Ceramics and Glass
+46 (0)739 40 08 02
A Chinese album with paintings of Envoys Presenting Tribute 职贡图(Zhigong tu), probably 17thCentury, after an old master.

Mesurement album 49x37x5 cm. One fold out with calligraphy and seals in red. Measurement calligraphy area when folded out 29x74 cm. Followed by 10 fold outs with a panel with calligraphy to one side, calligraphy leave with signature purportedly Yu Ji (1272-1348) and a painting of a procession of people bearing tribute. One painting with a signatue, Zhao Boju. The laste page signed Zhao Yong (Zhao Zhongmu, 1289-1369) as well as Ouyang Xuan (1274-1358) Mearuement of the paintings are each 45x29 cm.

Wear, stains.

Provenance

From the collection of a Scandinavian nobleman, who had a long diplomatic career starting, in the 1920s as a young attache in China, later on as ambassador in China.

There are several seal marks to this painting, that might reveal more information about the authors and collectors including: 冀公世家(Ji gong shi jia, used by Yuan Dynasty Ouyang Xuan歐陽玄, 霜華山人(Shuang hua shan ren, used by Yuan Dynasty Ouyang Xuan歐陽玄, 蘧公氏 (Qu gong shi)

Exhibitions

This album under consideration share many similarities with the one attributed to Ming Dynasty painter Qiu Ying 仇英 in the Palace Museum, Beijing. (See the link here 仇英职贡图卷-故宫名画记 (dpm.org.cn))

Literature

This genre of paintings is related with the Tribute System that was historically a unique way in which the dynastic court in China engaged in diplomacy with external polities and other peoples. It involved tributary states or groups of people sending envoys to the Chinese rulers with offerings on a periodic basis. Paintings of tribute-bearing envoys and official missions to China depict the peoples and tribes of various nations with diplomatic relations, of vassal states, and from border regions.

More information

Might originally have been a long horizontal handscroll, reformatted into an album.