the substantial stone deftly fashioned in the round, depicting two cuddling horses, one with its head turned backwards staring at another lying adjacent to it, each detailed with gentle eyes of almond shape and well-groomed mane, their bodies elegantly curved with the muscular legs tucked underneath their bodies and tails curled alongside their hind haunches, the stone of an opaque milky-white tone with traces of reddish russet veining, inscribed to the underside with a four-character Qianlong seal mark
Skilfully fashioned in the round, this carving of two jade horses is notable for the portrait-quality in which they have been sensitively rendered. Their gentle smiling features and full rounded body have been endowed with individuality through the jade stone from which it has been fashioned. For another rare carving of two horses, see the example from the collection of Lolo Sarnoff, sold in our New York rooms, 17th/18th March 2017, lot 324.
For jade carvings of individual horses, see a larger horse from the collection of Sir John Woolf, included in the exhibition The Woolf Collection of Chinese Jade, Sotheby’s, London, 2013, cat. no. 102, together with a pair of larger pale celadon examples, cat. no. 101; another in the British Museum, London, illustrated in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade. From the Neolithic to the Qing, London, 1995, pl. 16:20; and a third from the H. Tutein Nolthenius collection, was included in the exhibition Oosterse Schatten – 4000 Jaar Aziatische Kunst, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1954, cat. no. 84. See also a much larger example in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, illustrated in James C.S. Lin, The Immortal Stone. Chinese Jades from the Neolithic Period to the Twentieth Century, London, 2009, pl. 39.
