NEW YORK, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- A handscroll in cursive script by Chinese calligrapher Zhu Yunming sold for 1.6 million U.S. dollars, the top selling lot of the Asian Art Week that just concluded over the weekend in Sotheby's New York.
The price of the handscroll, named "Ode to the Goddess of the Luo River," was 400,000 dollars higher than the high estimate.
Zhu was one of the most critical calligraphers from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) known for his uninhabited lifestyle and iconoclastic thinking. The piece was a gift to his close friend Xie Yong.
The handscroll exhibits the classical beauty of the calligrapher's cursive scripts, and its imposing scale is considered extremely rare for his calligraphies.
The lot was part of the auction of "fine classical Chinese paintings & calligraphy" that included works by Zhu and modern masters such as Qi Baishi, Wu Hufan, Wu Changshuo, among others.
A series of seven auctions were carried out during Sotheby's Asian Art Week. They featured more than 1,200 exceptional examples of Chinese works of art, Korean art, Buddhist art, Chinese paintings and calligraphy.
One of the auctions that was eye-catching featured a selection of over 300 Chinese works of art originally gifted by Florence and Herbert Irving to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The auction was led by a massive spinach-green jade "dragon" washer, which fetched 1.3 million dollars, more than eight times its high estimate of 150,000 dollars.
The washer was hewn from a massive jade boulder and carved to the exterior with powerful dragons writhing through swirling clouds and turbulent seas.
Angela McAteer, Sotheby's head of Chinese works of art department in New York, said the auction house was very pleased with the results.
"Overall, works emerging from well-known and provenanced collections captured the attention and enthusiasm of the market," McAteer said, noting that bidding on Chinese art was incredibly robust.
The auctions achieved 37.4 million dollars, up 10.3 percent compared to the same period last year.
A single purchase
