A white jade 'landscape' table screen, Qing dynasty, 18th - 19th century | 清十八至十九世紀 白玉庭園高士及松鶴延年圖硯屏

Jade table screens with small figures featured in a landscape, such as the present lot, would have been placed on the imperial scholar's desk for contemplation and escape from the stresses of bureaucratic life. See a related pale green jade screen, Qing dynasty, carved with three sages in a similar landscape scene, from the Palace Museum, Taipei, illustrated in Chang Li-tuan, The Refined Taste of the Emperor: Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch'ing Court, Taipei, 1997, pl. 71. See also another screen with this theme, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Edmund C. Converse, 1921, illustrated in Magic, Art and Order. Jade in Chinese Culture, Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, 1990, no. 122.