Page 257 - 2019 September 13th Christie's New York Important Chinese Works of Art

This beautifully modeled fgure of a benevolently smiling
Daoist sage belongs to a small group of rare Buddhist
and Daoist fgures made at the Jingdezhen kilns in the
Song dynasty. Most of the published fgures preserved in
Chinese collections represent the bodhisattva Guanyin.
This Daoist fgure is thus especially rare. A very similar
Daoist fgure also seated on top of a glazed pierced rock
stool, with the body and robe of the fgure left in the
biscuit, was excavated from a Southern Song tomb which
is dated to the 4th year of Xianxiang (1268) in Panyang
county of Jiangxi province and is now in Jiangxi Provincial
Museum and illustrated by Zhang Bai in Complete
Collection of Ceramic Art Unearthed in China - 14 - Jiangxi,
Beijing, 2008, no. 70.
A qingbai fgure of a seated Guanyin was unearthed in
1964 from the crypt of a Jin dynasty pagoda at Fengtai,
Beijing, and is now in the Capital Museum. The fgure is
mainly biscuit-fred, with, like the present fgure, only the
edges of the robe covered with a qingbai glaze. Remains
of pigment can be seen on the biscuit-fred areas, as can
be noted in the illustration in Beijing Relics, Beijing, 1990,
p. 75, no. 114. Another seated Guanyin, this one with her
outer robe and her rocky pedestal (similar to that of the
present fgure) covered in qingbai glaze, was excavated
from a Song dynasty well in Changzhou City, Jiangsu
province in 1978. This fgure, which has been dated to the
Southern Song period, is illustrated in Gems of China’s
Cultural Relics, Beijing, 1997, no. 16.
A fourth fgure of this type, also a seated Guanyin, is now
in the Shanghai Museum, and is illustrated in Zhongguo
Taoci Quanji, 16, Song Yuan Qingbaici, Shanghai, 1984,
no. 76. This fgure still has pigment adhering to the
unglazed areas, and also bears an inscription dating it to
the 11th year of the Shunyu reign of the Southern Song
dynasty, equivalent to AD 1251. In addition, there is an
exceptionally rare and beautiful qingbai seated Guanyin
from the Yiqingge Collection with the outer robe covered
with a characteristic pale blue glaze, reserving the head
and upper body in the biscuit, and also dated to Southern
Song Dynasty, sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 1 June 2011,
lot 3726.

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