Lot Spotlight: Not Just Another Tea Bowl and Saucer
Lot 42 in the June 26 Asian Art auction at Freeman’s | Hindman has a past.
The delicately potted 18th-century tea bowl and saucer, made and decorated in China with a beautiful woman (meiren) and boy in a garden, was once part of two of the most notable late 19th/early 20th-century collections of Chinese porcelain ever assembled in America.
A Chinese Export Famille Rose Porcelain Tea Bowl and Saucer, ex. Garland and Morgan Collections, 18th Century 清中期 粉彩人物圖杯碟 Garland及摩根收藏 | Estimate: $1,000 - 1,500
Labels affixed to the undersides indicate the tea bowl and saucer were formerly in the collections of James A. Garland (1840-1900) and John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913). Garland, a banker and co-founder of what was to become Citibank, assembled his collection of over 1000 pieces with the assistance of the Duveen Brothers. The collection was displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art until 1902 when Garland’s heirs sold it to the Duveen Brothers, who then sold it to Morgan.
Morgan was one of the most important financiers and philanthropists of the American Gilded Age. A donor to the Metropolitan Museum, he served as the president of the Board of Trustees from 1904 to 1913. After his death, his son donated numerous important works to the Met. The Duveen Brothers acquired his Chinese porcelain collection, which they distributed among their wealthy clients, including Henry Clay Frick and the Rockefellers. Many pieces from the Garland-Morgan collection are now in important public and private collections.
Click here for this and other 18th-century Chinese porcelains in the June 26 auction.