An exceptional twelve-panel painted 'bird and flower' silk screen, Qing dynasty, 17th century

Collection of Alan Priest (1898-1969), acquired in Beijing, 1919.

Robert H. Ellsworth, New York.

Sotheby's New York, 30th March 2006, lot 251.

The Manchu Dragon: Costumes of the Ch'ing Dynasty 1644-1912, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1980.

Bird-and-flower paintings (huaniaohua) represent one of the key pillars of the literati aesthetic and have been favored by connoisseurs and the court alike from as early as the Song dynasty. Under the patronage of the Northern Song Emperor Huizong (r. 1101-1125), the Imperial Academy was established, where artists were encouraged to create and experiment with their painting style. It was there that painter Cui Bai (fl. ca. 1060-1085) is often credited with changing the direction of bird-and-flower paintings, making them more animated and freer in style than the more observational works of the early period. Compare Cui’s Magpies and Hare in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Wen Fong and James Watt, Possessing the Past, New York, 1996, pl. 71. While extremely detailed and representational in some respects, Cui’s composition is full of energy, naivety and movement as the scene swirls around one’s focal point.

This naive yet potent vibrancy remains at the heart of the present screen. Depicting the myriad birds amongst a landscape filled with lush greens, dramatic rockwork and flowers bursting with life, the screen exudes an ineffable sense of movement and grandeur, immediately striking on encounter. During the late Ming dynasty, painting on a gilded ground had become a popular technique in China, influenced by the fine silver and gold screens and fans imported from Japan. Employed here as the backdrop for the vivid scene in resplendent polychrome, the gold background only further adds to the majesty and impact of the arrangement.

However, the complexity of the present design was not merely a way to highlight the extraordinary skill of the artist but rather also functioned as a metaphor for society writ-large. While larger colorful birds come to represent the higher echelons of society, the smaller birds in their midst symbolize the common people. Living in harmony with one another, playing their role in the orchestra of life, each charming bird in turn pays homage to the phoenixes – King of Birds – which dominate the center of the image and symbolize the emperor and the empress. Because the phoenix is said only to appear during peaceful reigns, it is also closely connected with dynastic rule, and in this sense, the screen becomes an emblem of a healthy relationship between ruler and subject. Other pairs of birds in this grand ensemble similarly represent the four other fundamental relationships codified in Confucian thought (wulun): the cranes symbolizing the relationship between father and son; mandarin ducks, the relationship between husband and wife; wagtails, the relationship between brothers; and orioles, the relationship between friends.

By the late Ming dynasty, ‘hundred bird’ designs had become a popular and striking part of the visual canon of the aristocracy and were increasingly incorporated into folding screen designs. While surviving examples of this type in painted silk are exceedingly rare, a number of important closely related twelve-panel examples in coromandel lacquer survive depicting similar ‘hundred birds’ scenes. Compare one such screen illustrated in W. de Kesel and G. Dhont, Coromandel Lacquer Screens, Gent, 2002, pl. 40, attributed to the 18th century, in which the authors describe the development of this motif; another from the collection of C.T. Loo, Paris, published in Michel Beurdeley, Chinese Furniture, New York, 1979, pl. 184, attributed to the 17th century; and another dated by inscription to 1693, sold in our London rooms, 8th November 2017, lot 38. 

Only one other screen of this type and scale, painted with a vibrant design on gold, appears to survive, sold from the collections of Francis Egerton and the Duke of Kent in our London rooms, 12th May 2010, lot 40 (Fig. 1). Also compare a closely related set of twelve smaller paintings – perhaps originally conceived as screen panels – on the same subject with remarkable similarities in technique by the artist Yu Yuan, dated in accordance with 1686 and sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 9th July 2020, lot 2569 (Fig. 2).

Alan Priest, curator of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1927-63 acquired the panels in Beijing in 1919 and included the screen in several exhibitions throughout his tenure at the museum. The panels were bequeathed to Robert H. Ellsworth (1926-2011) who loaned them to the Metropolitan Museum for the exhibition, The Manchu Dragon: Costumes of the Ch’ing Dynasty 1644-1912, 1980. Mr. Ellsworth, a prominent art dealer, author, and philanthropist, was renowned for his expertise on Chinese painting and classical furniture. The collection of Asian art from his estate was later sold at Christie's New York, 17th-27th March, in a seven-part sales series.