Page 138 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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Buddha as the central figure. The lateral figures are fairly well balanced. The

surroundings show remarkable richness of the carved details, although (sic) they are not

elaborated and delicately finished. The human figures possess remarkably suave lines that

make the picture look calm and harmonious.” 288

In evaluating Chinese sculpture, terms such as naturalism and three dimensionality

were employed. It is not surprising that Sui and Tang sculptures were heavily promoted

by Loo. Between the 1910s and 1930s, C. T. Loo and other dealers introduced into

Western art museums a group of Lohan statues, formerly dated to the Tang dynasty. 289

The sensation that these statues created in the West could be partly explained by their

striking realism and individuality (Fig. 18). 290 The Westerners’ amazement was

illustrated in the article Hunt for the Gods by the German adventurer Friedrich Perzynski,

who first announced the discovery of these statues to the West. Perzynski described his

response when he saw one of these statues one night when two dealers came to his house

and opened the bundle they had brought, “‘The owners feasted their eyes upon my

profound amazement as they showed it to me. I had never seen anything like it. At the

time, we called him a Priest, for despite the traditional long ears, he possessed the striking

pictorial quality of a portrait.’” (Smithies 2001, 52)

288
The author’s italicization. H.S. Pao to D. W. Ross, August 4, 1919, folder: Lai-Yuan
Co., box: Unofficial Correspondence L, 1910-1922, AAOA-MFA.
289 They have recently been dated the eleventh century in the Liao dynasty. According to
Richard Smithies, between 1913 to 1931, at least eight Lohan statues found their way to
the museums in the West, including the MFA, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas
City, Met, UPM, the British Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. The eighth
Lohan was destroyed during World War II in Berlin (Smithies 2001).
290 They were the largest Chinese ceramic figures known to the West. They were also
treasured for their age.