Page 55 - 2021 March 15th Fine Chinese Paintings and Works of Art, Bonhams NYC New York

PROPERTY OF AN ENGLISH LADY The story of Li Tieguai is fairly well-known but is well condensed by
Stephen Little, Taoism and the Arts of China, p.331, No 125. He notes
54 that the Ming Dynasty compendium the Complete Biographies of the
AN UNUSUAL BUFFALO HORN FIGURE OF LI TIEGUAI Assorted Immortals (Liexian quanzhuan; 1598) compiled by Wang
18th/19th Century Shizhen, contains the following account of Li Tieguai:
The seated, bearded and rather emaciated immortal with his left
knee raised and tying the straps of his only sandal around his lower Li Tieguai had an eminent disposition. He attained the Tao at an early
calf and left foot, whilst his sandal-less lame right leg rests lifeless age. While cultivating realization in a mountain cave, Li Laojun [the
on the ground, a small lion creeps around his right side and glares deified Laozi] and Master Wenqiu [an adept of the Shang dynasty]
up at him with open mouth, the undaunted immortal smiles happily often descended [from heaven] to his mountain retreat, where they
from an expressive face with full cheeks and bushy eyebrows, a instructed him in Taoist teachings. One day he was about to attend
large gourd is suspended from his back and tied with a twisting a meeting with Laojun on Mount Hua [the sacred peak in Shaanxi
rope at his right shoulder. province]. Li said to his disciple, “My physical body will remain here
4 1/4in (10.8cm) high - if my ethereal soul [hun] does not return in seven days, you may
cremate my body.” On the sixth day the disciple’s mother fell ill and he
had to rush home, so he cremated the body. On the seventh day Li’s
$3,000 - 5,000 spirit returned, but his body was gone and he was not pleased. He
thereupon possessed the corpse of a man who had starved to death,
十八/十九世紀 牛角雕李鐵拐 and rose up. Because of this, his form is that of a crippled man...

This figure is unusual, in not depicting the immortal with his usual He is, as a result, usually depicted as a lame or crippled beggar, hence
attribute of an iron-crutch on which he usually supports himself. the ‘iron-crutch’, and disheveled clothing, and his gourd vessel was a
Instead, rather cleverly, the artist simply suggests the lameness of the symbol of the joining of heaven and earth in the adepts own body.
sitter by a far more subtle reference of depicting one sandle, and drawing
understated attention to it by the act of tying it to his healthy foot.

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