Description
John Moran Auctioneers, Pasadena, California, Published 2015. Wraps, 63 pp.; 28 cm; profusely illustrated in color throughout with photographs of the lots.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
Turn the pages with the arrows, keyboard, or a swipe.
Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Glossy pictorial paper covers, the front printed with a photograph of a pair of carved white jade seals surmounted by Buddhist lions against a black ground, the back a photograph of a Tang-style polychrome ceramic horse. Light bumping to edges and corners and mild shelf wear. Binding tight. Otherwise unmarked. Auction catalogue for the second session of John Moran Auctioneers' decorative art auction of Tuesday, June 16, 2015, held at the Pasadena Convention Center. The session offered selections from the Asian art collection of Joan Irvine Smith (1933 to 2019), heiress to the Irvine Company fortune, California philanthropist, Arabian and Holsteiner breeder, and founder of The Irvine Museum (whose 1,200-painting California Impressionist collection was later gifted to UC Irvine). A preface by Moran notes that Smith began collecting Chinese art in the early 1950s and in the mid-1970s expanded her holdings to include Chinese and Japanese antiquities and equestrian art of exceptional quality. A substantial portion of the lots offered here were previously exhibited at the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, in "Heavenly Horses: 2000 Years of Chinese and Japanese Equine Art" (2014), and are illustrated in Edward D. Fosmire's catalogue of that exhibition. The sale begins with lot 2001 and runs through lot 2081. Lots include Tang Dynasty sancai-glazed ceramic horses (several with Bowers Museum exhibition provenance, the highest-estimated a sancai horse at $35,000 to $45,000 and a sancai horse with bowed head at $30,000 to $50,000), a Wei Dynasty ceramic horse and armored rider tomb figure, Chinese export porcelain, carved jade Buddhist lion seals, Chinese glass overlay bowls, Qing Dynasty silk embroidery panels, Qing Dynasty ink-and-color scroll paintings, hand-painted byobu folding screens by the Beverly Hills artist Robert Crowder (1911 to 2014), Japanese carved stone Komainu temple lions, Edo Period Japanese cast-iron abumi stirrups and a Hakata-style horse-form incense burner, Chinese carved marble horse busts, and early-nineteenth-century Thai royal court paintings and a Thai scroll painting. Concludes with John Moran's standard buyer's premium and bidding increment tables.