Page 71 - 2019 September 13th Christie's New York Important Chinese Works of Art

This elegant fgure, beautifully modeled with carefully incised lines
that suggest the folds of the garment, is a particularly large and
charming example of the court ladies that became fashionable in
the second half of the Tang dynasty. The reign of Emperor Ming
Huang seems to have heralded the growth in popularity of a more
generous female form and the adoption of less structured, fowing
robes. This change in style has traditionally been attributed to
the infuence of the emperor’s adored concubine Yang Guifei,
who was reported to have had a rather voluptuous fgure. Yang
Guifei was held partly responsible for the circumstances that led
to the An Lushan rebellion of AD 756, and she was executed by
the accompanying troops as she and the Emperor fed to Sichuan.
The Emperor’s grief at her loss was immortalized in one of China’s
best- known literary works, The Song of Eternal Regret. However,
excavated fgures suggest that this fashion was already coming
to prominence by the time that Yang Guifei won the emperor’s
admiration.
In addition to their robes, the hairstyles of these fgures also difer
from those of their slender predecessors. While the latter tended to
have their hair drawn back from the face and then arranged in one
or two elaborate knots, the plumper ladies, like the current fgure,
tend to have softer hair styles. The hair is much fuller, framing the
upper part of the face and is tied in a looser arrangement on top.

The fgures of this type usually hold their hands in front of them,
in order to provide a more graceful arrangement of their sleeves.
Some have their hands completely hidden as can be seen in three
of the fgures from the Schloss Collection. See J. Baker, Seeking
Immortality - Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection,
Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa Ana, 1996, p. 34, no. 17.
Others among these fgures hold a pet animal or bird, as in the
case of the fgure with a small pug dog in the Museum of Oriental
Ceramics, Osaka, illustrated by G. Hasebe and M. Sato, Sekai toji
zenshu, 11 Tang, Tokyo, 1976, no. 29, or the fgure gently cradling
a songbird in her hand, Seeking Immortality, op. cit., p. 34, no.
17, second from the right. A very few of the fgures hold a small
child, as in the case of a mother and child group excavated from a
tomb dated to AD 744 near Xi’an. See E. Schloss, Ancient Chinese
Ceramic Sculpture from Han through T’ang, vol. 1, Stamford, 1977, p.
42, fg. 7. The current fgure adopts a rather delicate pose, with her
small hands slightly raised and the ends of her sleeves allowed to
fall from the ends of her fngers.
The result of Oxford thermoluminescence test no. 766q98 is
consistent with the dating of this lot.

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