NORTHERN SONG DYNASTY (AD 960-1127)

The present figure was in the collection of the scholar-dealer Paul Houo-ming-tze (Huo Mingzhi, b. 1879), whose family home was Shaoxing in Zhejiang province. During the Republic period he managed a famous and successful antique shop in Beijing, called the ‘Studio for obtaining antiques’ where he specialised in selling books, bronzes, ceramics and sculptures. Due to his influential connections at all levels of the antiquarian world, including the Chinese nobility, he was able to obtain fine works of art objects. It was in the area of Buddhist art that he played a significant role and facilitated many Buddhist wood sculptures, many of these were from the Shanxi province, into collections around the world. The present figure was illustrated in Houo’s major publication, the catalogue Preuves des Antiquités de Chine, which was published in Beijing in 1930. In 1932, on Houo’s instruction, the majority of his items excluding this piece were sold at auction by J. C. Morgenthau & Co., in New York. The proceeds of that sale enabled Houo to donate more than a thousand antiques and rare books that sale to the Chinese State.

The present figure later entered the collection of Sam and Myrna Myers, an American couple who moved to Paris in the mid-1960s where they built an extraordinary collection focusing on Asian art.