Wenfangtu: Stories of Shelves of Precious Objects
- sopoodz
- Sep 7
- 2 min read
It has been a long discovery journey for us, from the amazement towards a set of 4 painted panels of precious objects on wood shelves discovered in an auction in Florence many years ago to the reading of an academic paper last month.
We now know what these images are!
Our initial thought led us to believe that the panels offered in Italy were Korean: being a bit familiar with chaekgeori paintings, a style of painting that flourished in the end 18th century and 19th century and popular among Korean literati, we could find strong analogies (as per the picture above, from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco).
But doubts later emerged: first, the earlier works by Castiglione, an Italian Jesuit priest painter active in China, were presenting very similar features, broadening the field of possible provenances (see the picture below).
We also could not find Korean works with similar strong "trompe l'oeil" effects as our Italian examples.
During various trips in China, several discoveries led us to further question the Korean origin: similar representations could be seen on walls of Chinese mansions (such as above), and even in one pavillon of the Forbidden city, a set of similar paintings, though with more books than objects (see below).
It became clear that representations of shelves with books and scholar's objects were prevalent in 18th century (at least) China. Finally, a few weeks ago, we came across an academic paper by a collector / researcher:
We learn from this document that those series of representations, that we found first in Florence, then more recently in England, were prints on paper likely made in Suzhou in the mid 18th century; they would have been typically further enhanced manually with pigments.
They were made for the domestic market, but were also picked up by some Europeans and thus made their ways on walls of mansions across Europe as well as inspired some French cabinet makers under LOUIS XVI (see the other fascinating paper on the subject:
Eventually, those Wenfangtu ("scholar's studio objects") would have reached Korea and triggered the flourishing of Chaekgeory paintings from the late 18th century onwards.
The loop has been closed for the moment as far as our quest is concerned; you are welcome to view our set of four paintings currently exhibited at our studio in Tiong Bahru.
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