Chinese School | Albums of watercolours of flowers, fruit, birds and silkworms, circa 1800
Chinese School
Albums of watercolours of flowers, fruit, birds and silkworms. China, circa 1800
3 volumes, folio (509 x 374mm.), 244 mounted watercolours of flowers, fruit, birds and silkworms on Chinese paper, comprising vol.1: 82 drawings of flowers, vol.2: 82 drawings of flowers, vol.3: 8 drawings of silkworms, 7 of parrots, 59 of fruit/flowers, 6 of junks, nineteenth-century russia gilt, gilt armorial of George Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (later 5th Duke of Marlborough), light foxing to a few plates, one volume rebacked retaining original spine, one volume with light water stain to upper cover, lightly scratched, some loss of leather to spine
AN EXQUISITELY DRAWN AND UNIFORMLY BOUND SET OF WATERCOLOURS FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH.
A sumptuous collects ion of mounted watercolours depicting Chinese silkworm cultivation, parrots and other birds, Asian fruits and multivarious species of flowers; the work of exceptionally fine draughtsmanship from a Chinese school. Stylistic variety suggests a number of hands. The Chinese characters on the painting of silkworms read 全源號繭箔 (Quan Yuan Hao Jian Bo), meaning a shop (the first three characters) that sells silk foil (the last two characters). The spines of two volumes are labelled "Flowers", and the third is labelled "Silk Worms, Fruits &c".
George Spencer, the fifth Duke of Marlborough (1766-1840), was previously the Marquess of Blandford, having received the title in 1798. The armorial design on the covers of this book exhibit the coronet of a marquess. When he became Duke of Marlborough in 1817, he updated his armorial to exhibit a ducal coronet. He had a famed library at Whiteknights Park, near Reading. In 1819, his library was sold due to financial difficulties exacerbated by his extravagant lifestyle (7 and 22 June 1819). At Whiteknights the Duke had established the gardens as some of the most renowned in England at the t.mes , richly described by Barbara Hofland in A Descriptive Account of the Mansion and Gardens of White-Knights, 1819. They featured a folly of a ruined Gothic chapel, exotic botanicals imported from China and India and a Chinese temple. He was a passionate botanist, and much of his library reflected this love for natural history, this rare collects ion of watercolours being no exception.
Following the Macartney Embassy in 1793, China opened up to the West, meaning the drawings could have been produced in the late eighteenth to the very beginning of the nineteenth century.
PROVENANCE:
George Spencer, 5th Duke of Marlborough, armorial binding, Whiteknights Library sale, Part I, 7 June 1819, lot 3596, for £140 (originally 4 volumes, now lacking the volume containing "the insects of China, with the different leaves and flowers on which they feed"); Fordham Johnson, bookplate.
John William Fordham Johnson (1866-1938) was a British-born Canadian businessman, who became Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia in 1931.
ESTIMATE:
£50,000-70,000
Chinese School Watercolours
