Page 13 - Sotheby's Part II Collection of Sir Joeseph Hotung Collection CHINESE ART , Oct. 9, 2022

survived. Such bronzes were most probably used in daily life, even if also with sockets at its back, formerly in the collection of Mrs Grace
some were eventually buried with important personalities. Rogers and included in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art,
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935-36, cat. no. 500, where it is
As a Han bronze animal sculpture, the present chimera is already attributed to the Six Dynasties period (220-589).
rare, but the way it is represented is particularly unusual. Its creator
– in this case the artist who created the clay model for the casting The sculptors of these figures have shown the animal in a state
– clearly aimed to express unbridled masculine vitality which, by of breathless attention, conveying tension of body and mind
association, would render the same to the patron who commissioned with muscles and sinews flexed and eyes focussed. Immediately
it and to any eventual owner, who could identify with it. It depicts an reminiscent in general concept, but capturing nowhere near the
animal at the height of its physical strength. The highly unusual detail bodily energy of the present piece are the monumental stone
of clearly rendered male genitals would probably have remained sculptures of bixie that were placed as tomb guardians on spirit ways
unseen and were probably never meant to be seen, since this figure in front of important tombs. These massive animals (typically 2.75 m
was not made for handling and once it was fitted as a support, this tall, 3 m long) are depicted in the same way as the bronze figures,
would have been impossible in any case. Clearly, this naturalistic walking in this other-worldly manner, with only the pads of their feet
feature was the artist’s means of imbuing his bronze with life, of touching the ground, their toes raised and kept free of the dust of the
encapsulating in it the virility that would empower the animal with the earth, but their pose tends to be rather static or at best resembling
spiritual energy required to avert evil. a leisurely walk.

A very similar chimera-shaped fitting, but not its pair, is in the Stone winged animals, but without horns, from an Eastern Han fig. 3
collection of the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (F 1961.3), tomb near Luoyang, now in the Luoyang Museum of Ancient Arts A jade winged chimera, Han dynasty, excavated from Baoji in 1978
bought by Charles Lang Freer from J.T. Tai, New York (fig. 1) at Guanlin Temple, are illustrated in Paludan, op. cit., pl. 36, and in © Baoji Bronze Ware Museum, Baoji, Shaanxi
(https://asia.si.edu/object/F1961.3/). It shows the same animal in the Zhongguo meishu quanji: Diaosu bian [Complete series on Chinese ྡɧ
same pose, but with longer peacock feathers at its wings and tufts art: Sculpture section], Beijing, 1988, vol. 2, pl. 93; another, perhaps ဏc͗༴ԝc1978ϋᘒᕒ̈ɺc
of hair at its legs, and with an opening at the back, where it may from the tomb of Emperor Guangwu (r. 25-57), is illustrated in ©৯Гᘒᕒڡზኜ௹ي৫
have had similar sockets. One other similar bronze figure is known, James C.Y. Watt et al., China. Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD,

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004, no. 1 (fig. 2). Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2000, no. 21 (fig. 4). Animals such
Victor Segalen encountered similar figures in Sichuan (The Great as the present piece are by some scholars believed to have served
Statuary of China, posthumously published, Chicago, 1978, pls 2 and as screen supports.
3 and fig. F). Several slightly later stone figures of this type are still
guarding tombs in the region of Nanjing, capital of the Chinese- The figure, which is recorded since 1924, formed part of the
ruled south after the Han dynasty; see, for example, one in front of renowned collection of Adolphe Stoclet and is reminiscent of
the imperial tomb of Song Wendi (r. 424-53), illustrated in Paludan, another bronze animal, perhaps the most famous piece from the
op.cit., pl. 59 and in Watt et al., op.cit., p. 25, fig. 22. Stoclet collection, a large bronze winged dragon figure (fig. 5). This
magnificent animal, now one of the highlights in the collection of the
Chimeras carved in jade are also known from the Han period, but Louvre Abu Dhabi, where it holds pride of place, is slightly earlier in
are generally rendered in a reclining pose that required less material; date, attributed to the Warring States period, but is depicted in a
one jade bixie of very similar overall form and pose, however, with a similarly powerful pose, with similar feathery wings and raised toes,
single circular socket on its back, was excavated from a Han tomb in a similar scroll pattern marking its skin, and also represents a fitting.
a northern suburb of Baoji in Shaanxi, included in the exhibition Tan It has been illustrated many times, for example, in Thomas Lawton,
Shengguang, ed., Yu tian jiu chang. Zhou Qin Han Tang wenhua yu ‘The Stoclets: Their Milieu and Their Collection’, Orientations, vol.
yishu/Everlasting like the Heavens. The Cultures and Arts of the Zhou, 44, no. 1 (January/February 2013), p. 71, fig. 5, and was included in the
Qin, Han, and Tang, Shanghai, 2019, pp. 372-3 (fig. 3). Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, London, 1935-36, no. 489.
A very similar horned and winged fabulous creature, but very Baron Adolphe Stoclet (1871-1949), a Belgian banker and industrialist,
differently depicted, crouching low to the ground, can also be seen and his wife Suzanne were highly enterprising art collectors and
in an exquisite bejewelled gilt-bronze ink-stone box excavated patrons. The two bronze animals formed part of the vast collection
from an Eastern Han tomb of the 2nd/3rd century at Xuzhou, of important works of art from all over the world, on display in
Jiangsu, and now in the Nanjing Museum, see Watt et al., op.cit., Palais Stoclet (fig. 6), an Art Deco work of art in itself, that is
no. 5. In the Six Dynasties period, bixie were also depicted in various still preserved in Brussels. This mansion and its garden had been
other media, particularly in China’s southern regions, for example, conceived for the Stoclets down to the last detail by the important
in green-glazed stoneware, but generally in a much less lively Austrian architect and designer Josef Hoffman (1850-1956) and
fashion than the present figure. are considered his main surviving oeuvre. Many artists of the
influential modernist workshops Wiener Werkstätten contributed to
We do not know what this animal would have supported, but this ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ (total work of art), foremost among them the
similar circular and rectangular sockets are held by a kneeling Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), who decorated the dining
winged divine figure cast in bronze, discovered in an Eastern Han room with a mosaic frieze. A view of the interior of Palais Stoclet with
fig. 2 tomb at the outskirts of Luoyang, Henan province; see Stephen a glass vitrine containing Chinese antiquities is published in Lawton,
A stone winged chimera, Eastern Han dynasty, found in Mengjin, Henan, in 1992; Luoyang Museum, Henan Little with Shawn Eichman, Taoism and the Arts of China, The Art op. cit., p. 68, fig. 2.
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24 I FOR COMPLETE CATALOGUING ༉းྡ፽ʫ࢙ሗᓭᚎ SOTHEBYS.COM/HK1292 THE PERSONAL COLLECTION OF THE LATE SIR JOSEPH HOTUNG I 25