19TH CENTURY

Details

**A RARE SET OF IVORY FIGURES OF THE EIGHTEEN LUOHAN
19TH CENTURY
Each shown seated on a rockwork stool, wearing crisply draped priest's robes and holding or accompanied by a different attribute, including a dragon, cats, a bird borne on vapor, Guanyin borne on vapor issuing from a stupa, and musical instruments, each face carved with smiling expression and each bald head with black stippling in back to indicate shaved hair, with applied ivory bases, the ivory of warm yellowish tone
4½ in. (11.4 cm.) high approximately, wood stands, wood case (18)

Provenance

Acquired by Lester James Hall in 1941 as a gift for his services in the Chinese National Air Corporation from a representative of the Chinese Government, and then by descent to the present owner.

Lot Essay

A luohan or arhat, is one who has reached the end of the Eight-Fold Path, and is not only perfect in himself but can help others to attain perfection.
For another set of ivory figures of the Eighteen Luohan of approximately the same size (5½ in. high), also shown seated, most on rockwork, and holding their attributes, see Warren E. Cox, Chinese Ivory Sculpture, 1956, pl. 26. Unlike the present figures, those illustrated by Cox are painted.

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