The Mallams (22.5% buyer’s premium) live online sale of Chinese, Japanese and Islamic art in Cheltenham on June 3-4 included Chinese works on paper and textiles from a relative of Katherine Talati (1922-2015).
A career diplomat for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Talati was also a talented artist who – between 1945 and her move to London in 1948 – received private tutorials from the classical landscape painter Prince Pu Quan (a great-grandson of the emperor Daoguang, 1820-50, and cousin of the last emperor Pu Yi).
Talati collected scroll paintings throughout her life and bequeathed some to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Included in the sale was a freehand painting of fruits and vegetables by Wang Xuetao (1903-82). Similar paintings celebrating the produce of China’s bountiful soils were created by the artist – a student of Qi Baishi – for government-sponsored agriculture fairs in the 1950s. The hammer price of £20,000 was at the top end of expectations.