Chinese Handscroll Makes Record Sale For Chiswick Auctions

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The scroll, from the Qing period, sold for £267,000

Xu Naigu, ink and colour on paper, hanging scroll

A Chinese handscroll dating from the Qing period, which was given as a wedding present to a bride in Hong Kong in 1974, has been sold by Chiswick Auctions for over a quarter of a million pounds.

The sale is a house record for the auctioneer which is based in Colville Road and Fulham Road. It is the highest individual selling price they have achieved at Chiswick Auctions in more than twenty years of business.

The handscroll, measuring over thirty metres in length by Qing artist Xu Naigu (1785 - 1835) made £267,600 hammer (including premium) against an estimate of £15,000-20,000 on Monday (November 13).

Competitive bidding in the saleroom and on the telephone saw a record sale total with hammer of just over £1.1. million across two days in sales of Asian art.

Bidders at Chiswick Auctions' Fine Chinese Paintings sale competed on the phone and in the room, starting with a £9000 bid, jumping by increments of £5000 and £10,000. The winning bid for the scroll was made on the phone and the scroll went to an anonymous buyer.

Head of Asian Art at Chiswick Auctions, Lazarus Halstead told chiswickw4.com that the scroll was so valuable because the various people who contributed were the great and good from over 100 years of Chinese history ranging from the literati to artists and poets. "It is a historical document but it's also a work of art".

Contributors include the Chinese scholar, Weng Tonghe (1830 - 1904), who was appointed as tutor to two consecutive Emperors, and the Chinese journalist and member of the Chinese Nationalist Party, Dai Jitao whose speculated love child was adopted by President Chiag Kai-shek (1887 - 1975). The handscroll would have been displayed at literati gatherings where connoisseurs gathered for esoteric artistic and philosophical debates with honoured guests invited to contribute.

Mr. Halstead said that when he received an email from the owner of the scroll,who is now based in London, and who was the recipient of the scroll in 1974 Hong Kong on her wedding day, he knew immediately that the scroll would be something special. Further research revealed even more evidence of its unique qualities, though the high price realised at auction took everyone by surprise.

The scroll was formerly owned by well-known Shanghai collector, Gao Shixian (1878 - 1952), whose name and seal appears on the title slip. It was acquired by the father of the consignor in Shanghai in 1948 and was given to her on her wedding day in 1974 in Hong Kong.To the right of the painting is a frontispiece and an older title slip mounted into the handscroll. To the left are colophons and dedications by the notable figures from across the Qing Dynasty, the first from 1821 and the last 1948.

Lazarus Halstead pictured with the scroll

Begun in 1821, the scroll unusually has no inscriptions between 1828 and 1898 until it was
'rediscovered' by loyalists to the waning Qing dynasty. The inscriptions which date from the late 19th century to the early 20th century demonstrate their grief at the collapse of over 2,000 years of Imperial China.

Chiswick Auctions is the only London saleroom to offer dedicated sales of Chinese Paintings.
November's sale is the second of this category to be held with the inaugural May sale seeing
phenomenal results.

It is believed that there is a growing appetite in China to bring back treasures of art and painting which have gone abroad.

The Xu Naigu handscroll won a commendation for Chiswick Auctions in the auctioneer category at the Asian Art in London's gala at the British Museum last week.

Mr. Halstead said that Chinese paintings are 'particularly interesting, as provenance can be 'written into' a work in the form of seals and colophons by known collectors who have owned an important work since its creation'.

November 17, 2017