The painting showed the face and shoulders of a pretty Chinese woman who, like most of the similar offerings, was not smoking.
The tobacco message was only very subtly linked to smoking in the 1920s and what was on offer was the very early stage of the advertising for which it was commissioned.
Maybe it was also still just a bit shocking for women to be seen smoking then.
Political correctness or not, the lack of cigarettes would not have mattered too much either way. One phone bidder from China with the not particularly auspicious paddle number 32 took many of the top lots. There was also clearly much competition from his compatriots and members of the local Chinese community via their presence or bidding on the phone and the Internet. Smoking still has a big following in China.
The lots were fully and handsomely full colour-catalogued and finely provenanced so they were barely sleepers – unless they for some extraordinary reason emerge as worth considerably more.
It became obvious during the viewing that the estimates were very conservative but Mr Julian Aalders seems to like to be able to pleasantly surprise his vendors.
Mr Aalders said that the estimates were based on the traditional Chinese watercolours done by some of the same artists had been selling for.
Although interest generated as word spread, revised ideas of their worth tended not to top $5000 per watercolour, he added.
The lots had been sitting in a camphorwood chest at the Newport, Sydney-based descendants of a British tobacco executive, Mr. William R. Pennell, for several decades, in a variation of the old packing chest story.
The watercolours' condition had been assisted by being preserved in camphorwood.
Chilly Beauty (69 by 35 cm) was commissioned for British American Tobacco around 1926 when Mr Pennell was head of advertising for the branch in Shanghai.
According to the Aalders catalogue, Pennell was in charge of a large number of student artists at the time and was an accomplished artist himself.
The watercolours, a legacy to Mr Pennell's niece, were works done for the company's posters and calendars. Chilly Beauty was made into a poster for Hatamen Cigarettes. The poster is part of a well published genre as it is illustrated in Selling Happiness, Calendar Posters and Visual Culture in Early 20th Century Shanghai by Ellen Johnston Laing.
Hu Boxiang was skilled in traditional Chinese portraiture and in landscape and animal painting. He founded and became director of the Oriental Fine Arts Society in Shanghai. He went on from illustration for which he was well paid, to a substantial business career.
Two other poster works by him sold for over $60,000 as did two by Hang Zhiying (1899-1947) who also featured in the book and in a Chinese TV documentary made this year.
Zhiying's Women with Birds made $68,730 and his Two Women on a Porch the same price.
Buyers appeared to have modest sensitivity to women smoking as Woman Smoking by Boxiang made $47,400 although close in size to the artist's two leading lots.
Spiders, however, were on the same level if Ni Gengye's Woman with Spider is anything to go by at $71,100, the sitter holding a twig with a spider on it instead of a cigarette holder.
The subject matter at lest appeared gave variety to the otherwise posed paintings of lengths and half lengths.
A distant shot by Boxiang of women also faired well with Women Seated by a Lake selling for $66,360 but the smaller dynamic Chinese Joan of Arc made only $20,145.
Many of the smaller later lots which were also by Boxiang sold for $2488 to $42,660 although the estimates were still $200 to $300.
Boxiang was an accomplished and atmospheric photographer so the $7475 paid for Boat in River and Tree by River should not have been a surprise.
According to a lot note it was also the basis of posters and calendars produced for Hatamen.
The 65 lots sold for $880,000 plus 18.5 per cent premium providing a nice variation to one of the Aalders' regular two day sales (statuary and porcelain was sold the day before) and a useful contribution to its $1.4 million hammer total.
