The 'Yale' 18th Century Chinese Screen

China | c. 1715

The panels painted in gilt on a black ground with figures pursuing everyday
activities amongst pavilions in a garden, within a group of shaped panels of qilin, flowers, landscapes, tree rats and grapes between scrolling lotus borders, the reverse decorated with tiger hunting scenes in a mountainous landscape.

Originally twelve fold.

Literature: A very similar twelve-fold screen, c.1725, is in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, USA, which carries mantled arms of Eccleston, for John Eccleston, director of the East India Company from 1721 to 1735.
Museum object number E84093.

Provenance: originally owned by Elihu Yale (1649-1721), President of the East India Company in Fort St. George at Madras, and a benefactor of the Collegiate School in the Colony of Connecticut, which in 1718 was renamed Yale College in his honour.
This very screen, as one of a pair, appeared in a Country Life article on Glemham Hall
Published in January 1910.

Measurements: Each panel 104” (264cm) High 17” (43.5cm)


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