Page 195 - 2019 September 11th Sotheby's Important Chinese Art

741
A SANCAI-GLAZED POTTERY FIGURE 唐 三彩女坐俑
OF A SEATED COURT LADY
TANG DYNASTY 來源
Pauline Palmer Wood (1917-1984) 收藏
well-modeled seated on a waisted stool 1977年贈予芝加哥藝術博物館，芝加哥，
decorated with petal lappets, poised with one
hand held at the waist, the other resting in 館藏編號1977.608
the lap, the long gown glazed in alternating
swathes of bright green and amber crisply
modeled with vertical stripes enclosing
scattered trefoil florets, the décolleté bodice
beneath a straw-glazed green-splashed shawl
covering the shoulders, the unglazed face with
delicate features framed by black hair parted
in the center and swept up to either side into a
double-topknot
Height 12½ in., 31.8 cm
PROVENANCE
Collection of Pauline Palmer Wood (1917-1984).
Gifted to the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago in
1977 (acc. no. 1977.608).
A nearly identical figure, seated with the same
hair style and blue and amber-glazed dress
was exhibited and illustrated in Arts of the Sui
and Tang Dynasties Art, Osaka City Museum,
1975, cat. no. 200. Another very similar figure
but also blue and amber-glazed was sold at
Christie’s Hong Kong, 29th November 2017, lot
2916. Related examples of this type include a
figure illustrated in Carl Hentze, Chinese Tomb
Figures, London, pl. 63b; another in Arts of
China: Neolithic Cultures to the Tang Dynasty,
Recent Discoveries, Palo Alto, pl. 376, from the
excavation at Wang-ji-fecun, Xian outskirts,
Shaanxi; and a fragment of a figure of this
type is illustrated by R. L. Hobson, The George
Eumorfopoulos Collection: Catalogue of Chinese,
Corean and Persian Pottery and Porcelain,
London, 1925-28, vol. 1, pl. XLIV, fig. 293.
Compare also a related seated figure of slightly
larger size, formerly from the collections of Capt.
S.N. Ferris Luboshez, Irene and Earl Morse and
Alfred A. Taubman, and sold in these rooms on
18th November 1982, lot 57; 1st June 1988, lot
88; and most recently, 16th March 2016, lot 272.
The source of manufacture for these figures
has proven difficult to identify. Among figural
representations, sancai-glazed sculptures of
seated ladies are relatively rare and, to date it
appears that there were very few kilns known
to produce sancai-glazed figures. The Gongyi
(Gongxian) kilns in Henan province in north
China, are well known as the producers of
China’s finest sancai lead-glazed wares but
excavations at the site have revealed few figural
remains. A misfired sancai-glazed lady, seated
and holding a duck-form vessel, was discovered
at the Liquanfang kilnsite in Chang’an, illustrated
in Lu Junmao & Zhang Guozhu, Fragmentary
Ceramics of Ancient Xi’an, Xi’an, 2003, p.
8, which is of similar form to a sancai figure
unearthed from the tomb of Li Du and his wife
in Changzhi, Shanxi, dated to AD 710, illustrated
in Hsie Mingliang, Zhongguo gudai qianyoutao
de shijie [The world of lead-glazed objects from
ancient China: from the Warring States to Tang],
Taipei, 2014, fig. 5.28.

$ 30,000-50,000
EARLY CHINESE CERAMICS FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO 1 19393