~ A Chinese Celadon Jade Inscribed “Luohan” Boulder, Qianlong, carved with Ańgaja in a grotto, seated cross-legged in loose flowing robes, his left hand holding a sutra and walking stick, the right counting prayer beads, flanked by the Imperial eulogy and seal marks
20cm high

With original receipt from Trollope & Sons (London) Ltd, West Halkin Street, London dated 25 November 1955 for £85, as well as a transcription of the eulogy

The inscription can be translated as “Wearing a hundred-patch robe and leaning on a proper bamboo staff, his Vedic ritual texts in a bookcase, he stares at his akshamalika straight across his chest. What he has remembered is not nothing, although there are no words for it.”

The iconography of this depiction of Ańgaja is derived from the portrait series of the sixteen Luohans painted in 891 by the Tang dynasty painter-poet-monk, Guanxiu for the Shengyinsi or 'Temple of Sage Reason'; the temple was later destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion. In this series the artist depicted the enlightened disciples with grotesque bodies, hunched backs, bushy eyebrows, and pronounced foreheads, as they had allegedly appeared to him in a dream.

In 1757, the Qianlong Emperor visited the Shengyin Temple during his Southern inspection tour to study these images of the Luohan as an act of religious devotion. He recorded that, having seen the masterpieces, he was inspired to personally write a eulogy comprising two colophons for each painting. The Emperor believed the paintings to be the same set that had been recorded in the Xuanhe Huapu [The Xuande catalogue of paintings], the inventory of the Song dynasty emperor Huizong.

Subsequently, Qianlong commanded the palace painting master, Ding Guanpeng (act.1708-ca.1771) to copy the paintings and to include new inscriptions of the eulogies. Ding’s copies are now in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei and were widely copied in various media.

In 1764, the abbot at Shengyin Temple, Master Mingshui, instructed local stone engravers to copy Guanxiu’s paintings and the Emperor’s colophons and seals. The sixteen engraved stone panels were installed on the sixteen sides of the Miaoxiang Pagoda in Hangzhou. Almost immediately rubbings of the panels were being produced. Knowing the Emperor’s fondness for them, in 1778, the military governor of Shandong province, Guotai (d.ca.1782), presented the Qianlong Emperor with a magnificent zitan folding screen set with black lacquer panels inlaid with white jade in imitation of the rubbings.

A similar jade boulder, depicting the second Luohan, Kanakavasta, was recorded in the collection of the Wou Lien-Pai Museum as published in Rose Kerr et al., Chinese Antiquities from the Wou Kiuan Collection, Surrey, 2011, pl. 177 (fig. 2).

Another example depicting Kanaka is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 02.18.640 and a further example as Cudapanthaka is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

A sixteen-fold screen with inlaid jade plaques portraying the sixteen luohans, including a depiction of Angaja derived from the same source as the present jade, dated to the forty-second year of the Qianlong reign (1777) is in the Palace Museum, Beijing, exhibited at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (22 June 2012 - 14 October 2012), and illustrated in A Lofty Retreat from the Red Dust: The Secret Garden of Emperor Qianlong, Hong Kong, 2012, pp.216-233, no.53.

A Qianlong Imperial jade screen with the same image of Ańgaja and inscribed with the same script and seals as the present examples was offered by Bonhams Hong Kong, 24 November 2012, lot 307 and Christie’s Hong Kong, 29 November 2022, lot 3049.

Please note that there will be no internet bidding on this lot. All bidders on lots 1-10 will be required to provide identification and a deposit of £1,000. Registration for commission and telephone bidding on these lots will close on Wednesday 13^th March at 12 noon. To register please email enquiry@tennants-ltd.co.uk