Composition 17

The eighteenth-century fascination for lavish decorative chinoiserie meets the nineteenth-century explorers’ quest for flowers, plants and creatures from far-flung lands.

In an echo to the fantastical garden scene on the hand-painted folding ping feng screen, that acts as a backdrop, a menagerie of flowers, fruit, and beautiful birds capture us their beauty. Roses ramble, trail and climb around the scene. Flamboyant dahlias, tight peonies, delicate belladonna lilies and huge nerines dazzle us with colour. A pair of pineapple lilies point to their spiky fruit, sitting in a cornucopia groaning with grapes, melons, figs and a custard fruit.

And creatures galore. The parrots that seem to have emerged from the screen. The haughty golden pheasant, revelling in his glorious plumage and the exquisite crane, keeping watch, a symbol of wisdom and long life. A butterfly rests on a rose tendril and a frog sits on his silk cushion, waiting, possibly to be kissed.

This is an exotic fantasia, an explosion of the imagination, a bedazzlement, an invitation into the private world of a lavish collector of all that is extraordinary, luxurious, sumptuous, of marvels from a distant world.