18TH CENTURY

This skillfully carved jade boulder depicts an energetic scene of hunters on horseback within a rocky landscape with pine and wutong trees, pursuing two deer that appear at the top of one side. While depictions of scholars or immortals in landscapes are more commonly found on Qing-dynasty jade boulders, hunting scenes like that depicted on the present work are somewhat more unusual. The depiction of horses appears as topical imagery in the arts during the early Qing dynasty among the Manchu rulers, who were themselves descendants of nomadic herdsmen. It is known that Emperor Qianlong, while still a prince, prided himself on being a keen horseman and was portrayed as such in court paintings.

A white jade boulder of slightly smaller size (8 ¾ in.), with a similarly carved scene set in a rocky landscape with pine and wutong trees, but with a procession of horses and buffalos, was sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1 December 2009, lot 1997. And for another white jade boulder with a scene of Shoulao in a rocky landscape with similar trees, 8 ¼ in. high, see R. Kleiner, Chinese Jades from the Collection of Alan and Simone Hartman, Hong Kong, 1996, p. 163, no. 128.

A horizontally oriented white jade boulder in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, depicts a hunting scene with archers and equestrians with spears like those on the present boulder, and was exhibited and published in The Refined Taste of the Emperor: Special Exhibition of Archaic and Pictorial Jades of the Ch’ing Court, Taipei, 1997, p. 166-67, no. 52.