Page 44 - Fine Chinese Ceramics Sept 2016

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A RARE GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF GUANYIN AND A CHILD
LATE YUAN-EARLY MING DYNASTY, 14TH-15TH CENTURY
The bodhisattva is shown seated in rajalilasana holding a pearl in the right hand and the
left supporting a young boy seated on the left knee. A shawl is draped over the shoulders
and a broad belt is tied with a bow around the top of the dhoti which is folded at the waist,
exposing the bare chest spanned by a beaded necklace. The hair is drawn up into a topknot.
11æ in. (30 cm.) high, stand
$80,000-120,000

PROVENANCE

The Collection of John T. Dorrance, Jr.; Sotheby’s New York, 20-21 October 1989, lot 311.
Private collection, New York.
The Chinese Porcelain Company, New York.

EXHIBITED

New York, The Chinese Porcelain Company, Chinese Works of Art and Snuf Bottles,
1-24 June 1994, no. 2.

LITERATURE

The Chinese Porcelain Company, Chinese Works of Art and Snuf Bottles, New York, June,
1994, pp. 10-11, no. 2.

The present fgure sits in the ‘Water and Moon’ (shuiyue) posture, with the right arm
draped languidly over the raised knee. Such depictions probably originated in the Tang
period, but gained increasing prevalence in the Song and Yuan dynasties. The particularly
slender waist and treatment of the jewelry and hair, however, associate the present work
with a corpus of bronzes dated to the Yuan and Ming dynasties. See, for example, a
related bronze in The Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, and another in
The Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, illustrated in Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue
of Chinese Buddhist Sculptures in Overseas Collections, vol. 7, Beijing, 2005, p. 1403 and
p. 1401, respectively.

The present work is particularly rare as an early depiction of the Songzi form of Guanyin,
or the ‘Bringer of Sons,’ identifed by the boy seated on her knee. Extant depictions of
Songzi Guanyin from the later Ming dynasty are known, such as a gilt-bronze fgure
seated on a lotus base, illustrated by H. Munsterberg in Chinese Buddhist Bronzes,
Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, 1967, no. 73.
元末/明初 鎏金銅送子觀音像

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