Page 198 - Christies Fine Chinese Works of Art March 2016 New York

1477 Compare the similar fgure of an ox excavated from a Northern Wei tomb
dated AD 524 illustrated in Kaogu, 1972: 4, pl. 19, and the ox with a cart from
A GREY POTTERY FIGURE OF AN OX the tomb of Yuan Shao near Luoyang, Henan, dated to AD 528, illustrated
NORTHERN WEI DYNASTY (AD 386-534) in Kaogu, 1973:4, pl. 12:3. A very similar ox, minus the harness of the present
fgure, from the Yale University Art Gallery, is illustrated by J. Fontein and
The ox is powerfully modeled standing foresquare, and its head is Tung Wu in Unearthing China’s Past, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1973,
fnely detailed with fared nostrils, ears pricked below the horns, p. 167, no. 82. Another ox with a similar type of harness is illustrated by
realistic folds above the eyes, and a leather harness that loops behind A. Juliano in Bronze, Clay and Stone: Chinese Art in the C.C. Wang Family
the horns and has bosses at the interstices. There are traces of red Collection, 1988, no. 40.
pigment.
The result of Oxford thermoluminescence test no. 466h96 is consistent with
7 in. (17.8 cm.) long the dating of this lot.

$8,000-12,000 北魏 灰陶牛

PROVENANCE

J. T. Tai & Co., New York.
Schloss Collection, New York.
Chinese Sculpture from the Collection of Lillian Schloss; Sotheby’s
New York, 9 December 1987, lot 36.

EXHIBITED

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Arts of Ancient
China, 1973-1974.

LITERATURE

Ezekial Schloss, Ancient Chinese Ceramic Sculpture from Han through Tang,
2 vols., Stamford, Connecticut, 1977, vol. II, pl. 39.

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