QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY

On bamboo carvings, there is an emergence of two dominant themes in which horses are the main focus. The first illustrates a group of figures observing horses which attributes to the story of Bole, the legendary expert on horses who is thought to have lived between 7th to 5th century BC. The other is a scene of horses being led, invariably in a forceful manner, by groomsmen into a river or stream presumably with the intention of bathing the horses as in the case of the present carving. Comparable scenes are found on brushpots in the Palace Museum, Beijing; the first is illustrated in The Palace Museum Collection of Elite Carvings, Forbidden City Publishing House, 2002, p. 52, no. 23. The other brushpot is illustrated by Wang Shixiang, Zhuku Jianshang, Taiwan, 1997, p. 117, no. 17.