‘NINE CRABS GOING ASHORE’, MING DYNASTYChina, 1368-1644. Ink and watercolors on silk, laid down on paper. Exquisitely painted with nine crabs by the shore with reeds, grasses, and daisies, vividly executed with most crabs on land, one partly submerged in the water, and another emerging amid water reeds, each crab shown in a different position and painted with remarkably realistic detail.Inscriptions: Lower left, signed ‘Li Goungyuan’. To the back, inscribed ‘[…] Crabs’.Provenance: The Oliver Impey Collection of Modern Paintings, previously in the Collection Josenbans. The reverse inscribed, ‘Collection Josenbans. Period: Ming Dynasty. Subject: Marine life, Grappes [sic]. Artist: Lee Shen Wan’, and with an old Swiss customs stamp. Oliver Impey (1936-2005) was the President of the Oriental Ceramics Society (1997-2000), a noted curator at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and a leading authority on the arts of Japan. He studied at the University of Oxford,pleting his thesis while working in London at Sotheby's, where his connoisseur and remarkable breadth of knowledge began to develop, as well as his intimate knowledge of the art trade and vigilant eye for a bargain. In 1967, he was appointed Assistant Keeper for Japanese Art at the Ashmolean, and was able, as a Sotheby's colleague put it rather bluntly, to move “straight from the whorehouse to the nunnery”. For nearly four decades, Impey was a tireless acquirer of fine objects, vastly expanding the Museum’s holdings. He designed and raised the funds for a new Japanese Decorative Arts gallery to house these treasures and he also befriended several generous benefactors, who made important donations to the Museum. The respect with which he was held in Japan was marked by the award of the Koyama Fujio Memorial Prize in 1997. His personal collection contained works by major masters from Japan, China, and several other Asian countries, of which many were sold by Christie’s in Hong Kong in the late 2000s.Condition: Conditionmensurate with age. Wear, staining, soiling, creasing, few tears, minor losses. The silk has thinned substantially over the centuries so that the ink inscription on the reverse has slightly bled through to the front.Dimensions: Image size 98.5 x 40.3 cm, Size incl. mounting 118.5 x 44.3 cmAn old name in Chinese for crab was jia, a reference to the creature’s shell, which has the additional meaning of ‘first’ as in achieving the highest score in the examination to be a government official. The crab was therefore a symbol of success in the imperial examination system. Furthermore, themon Chinese name for crab and the Chinese word for harmony are both pronounced ‘xie’.明代《九蟹橫波》中國，1368-1644年，絹本水墨設色，橫軸。岸邊蘆葦叢中九隻螃蟹，栩栩如生，各自戲耍，有的半沉入水中，有一隻出現在蘆葦中，各自不同姿態，生動逼真。款識：李供垣；鈴印：李供垣印