SONG DYNASTY (960-1279)

This head is very similar to one from the J. T. Tai Collection, New York, sold at Sotheby's, Hong Kong, 29 April 1997, lot 717, which was later illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, Ancient Chinese Sculpture Treasures: Carvings in Wood, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 1998, pp. 74-5, no. 15. Dated Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) it is well carved with the same gentle expression - with very similar mouth, nose and eyes - and like the present head it still retains the cloth covering to which the original painted gesso surface would have been affixed. Also, like the present head, it has black glass pupils. The figure to which this head once belonged would most likely have been part of a set of luohans, each one with a different face. A similarly proportioned wood head of an elderly luohan with pronounced features and long eyebrows, also dated to the Song dynasty, was sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz, Köln, 26-27 November 1999, lot 127. See, also, the wood head of an elderly luohan with exagerrated features, laughing expression and bushy brows, that also still retains its cloth covering, in the Avery Brundage Collection, illustrated by d'Argencé, et al., Chinese, Korean and Japanese Sculpture, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1974, pp. 270-1, no. 142.