An extremely rare and important group of rubbings of the Wu Family Shrine, Early 20th century 

Collection of Esther Underhill Haviland (1921-1996) and John McMullen Farrior (1920-1989), acquired in China between 1947 and 1950, and thence by descent.

The Wu Family Shrine, constructed in the second century CE, north of Wuzhai Mountain in Zhifang Township, Jiaxiang county of Shandong province, stands as the most important surviving pre-Buddhist monument in China and as an irreplaceable visual archive of early Confucian thought. In a tradition where moral philosophy was primarily transmitted through texts, the reliefs on the stone walls preserve what would otherwise have vanished: a coherent visual representation of how the Han Chinese envisioned ethical order, historical authority, and the structure of the cosmos. Over the centuries, these walls, originally erected as offering shrines for the Wu family, have become an unparalleled window into the moral imagination of the early civilization.

The stone reliefs unfolding across the shrine’s walls form the most comprehensive pictorial program to survive from early China. Mythic rulers, exemplary officials and filial sons appear as components of a unified moral system, where ethical conduct sustains both political legitimacy and cosmic harmony. Just as classical texts such as the Analects or the Book of Documents provided moral exempla through narrative, abstract Confucian principles are rendered visible, legible, and enduring through these stone walls.

Perhaps more far-reaching and influential than the reliefs themselves are the rubbings, in which carved stone is translated into ink and carried far beyond the shrine’s walls. These rubbings have fascinated antiquarians throughout China's history. From their appearance in Ouyang Xiu's (1007-1072) Ji Gu Lu [Collected records of the past], China's earliest systematic epigraphy catalogue, to Ruan Yuan's (1764-1849) efforts in aligning the carvings with the records of the Classics in his Shanzuo Jinshizhi [Records of bronzes and stones from the Shanzuo region], these rubbings occupied a central place in the study of China's past. Thus, the present lot stands at the heart of this unbroken tradition—a tangible link in the centuries-long endeavor to preserve, study, and transmit these images, through which the voice of the Han continues to resonate across time and space. Indeed, as the Qing dynasty scholar and antiquarian Gong Xianglin (1658–1733) exclaimed upon viewing the rubbings of the Wu Family Shrine: 'How wonderful that this album (of rubbings) still exists in the world! Is it not an auspicious treasure under Heaven?'

Rubbings of the Wu Family Shrine are incredibly rare and most are now preserved in museums worldwide, including the National Palace Museum, British Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Field Museum, Harvard Libraries, and Berkeley Libraries. The present lot appears to be one of the most comprehensive group of rubbings to appear at auction in recent years.

From 1947 to 1950, Esther Underhill Haviland (1921-1996) lived in Beijing at a moment when scholarship and history converged. As a graduate student at Tsinghua University and a member of the first cohort of Fulbright scholars, she studied archaeology under Chen Mengjia, the first and foremost scholar of China’s ancient bronzes and oracle bones of the period. Analyzing fragments of inscribed oracle bones, Haviland sought to trace the military history of the Shang dynasty, searching for narratives carried across millennia. In Beijing, she met John McMullen Farrior (1920-1989), and the two married in July 1949, with Chen Mengjia, Esther's teacher, mentor and then already close friend, escorting her down the aisle (Fig. 1). A summary of Esther’s Fulbright years appears in Wilma Fairbank's America’s Cultural Experiment in China, 1942–1949, Washington, D.C., 1976, pp 186-187, capturing a brief, luminous chapter in the long history of this cultural exchange.