A sale of Chinese ceramics and works of art from various European collections totalled €6,873,934 at Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris on 11 June 2025. The surprise of the sale came from a magnificent and very rare pair of massive bronze-alloy mythical beasts, or bixie, from the Qianlong period (1736-1795), which sold for €4,065,600 against an estimate of €300,000 to 500,000. Powerfully built and seated on their hind legs with majestic heads raised, eyes bulging and fangs bared, their winged bodies indicate the supernatural powers believed to ward off evil.
A highly important 13th-century Ge mallow-shaped brush washer of the Song or Yuan dynasty, belonging to the celebrated jewellery designer Elsa Peretti (1940-2021), sold for €1,379,400 on behalf of the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation. The piece had travelled in an exhibition from New York to Taipei, Hong Kong and Paris before the sale.
An Imperial yellow-ground green-enamelled ‘dragon’ vase from the Qianlong period of the Qing dynasty, made to grace the Imperial quarters of the Qianlong emperor, sold for €241,700, twice its estimate of €120,000 to 150,000. It came from the collection of John Dearman Birchill (1828-1897), a wealthy English clothing manufacturer with a passion for Chinese porcelain, which he displayed in his mansion Bowden Hall in Gloucestershire.
An Imperial album illustrating the Dharani Sutra, from an English private collection, sold for €140,100, doubling its estimate of €50,000 to 80,000. Its painted representations of Bodhisattvas and Buddha are finely rendered, with texts written in gold on vibrant blue silk in the manner of other 18th-century Imperial albums.
The sale also featured two important examples of 18th-century furniture formerly in French private collections. A refined zitan side table with cloisonné and champlevé enamel applications and silver-inlaid details sold for €127,400, and a pair of gold-painted black lacquer display cabinets, belonging to an important group of Imperial palace furnishings, achieved €76,600. A very rare documentary polychromed clay portrait figure of the 28th Sakya throne holder Ngawang Sonam Wangchuk (1638-1685), from the Michael Henss Collection, sold for €102,000.
Two paintings by icons of 20th-century Chinese painting closed the sale. A wonderfully coloured painting of amaranths by Qi Baishi (1864-1957), dedicated to Dr Oskar Paul Trautmann (1877-1950), German ambassador to China in Nanjing between 1935 and 1938, sold for €89,300 against an estimate of €60,000 to 80,000. A second painting, by Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) and included in a 2011 exhibition on Chinese artists working in Paris at the Musée Cernuschi, sold for €127,400.
(Press Release)
