This unusual small figure appears to come out of the Northern Wei tradition of gray pottery figures of animals, especially dogs, shown in naturalistic poses, such as the two dogs included in the exhibition, Ming-Ch'i', The Katonah Gallery, Katonah, New York, April 12-June 29, 1975, illustrated by Schloss in the Catalogue, nos. 37 (recumbent on a rectangular base) and 40 (seated on a rectangular base); and another scratching itself while in a recumbent position illustrated in Sekai Toji Zenshu, Japan, 1961, fig. 305. These figures have the same slender legs and similar modeling of the heads showing wrinkled skin as seen in the present stone example. Although it shares the same quality of vitality displayed in the small (12.6cm.) brown stone figure of a lion hunched over as it tears into the flesh of hare held down by one paw on the rectangular base and dated to the Tang Dynasty, in the collection of the Louvre Museum, included in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, London, 1935-36, Catalogue, no. 629, it has not yet attained the powerful muscularity of the these later Tang lion figures, which are found in both stone and glazed pottery (see lot 215)