A Rare Painted Grey Pottery Figure of an Equestrienne

SUI/EARLY TANG DYNASTY

Details

A Rare Painted Grey Pottery Figure of an Equestrienne
Sui/Early Tang Dynasty
The solidly potted figure, possibly with a metal armature, modelled separately seated on a grey saddle blanket, wearing a tall peaked hood and with one hand held up as if to hold reins, the muscular horse with dressed tail standing foursquare on a rectangular base, the horse and the rider's trousers with the same dark red pigment, the surface with a burnished sheen, some restoration to head of horse
19¾in. (50.2cm.) overall height

Provenance

J.T. Tai

Literature

Janet Baker, Seeking Immortality, Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection, Santa Ana, 1996, p.45, pl.32
Connoisseur, October 1982, p. 92
Ezekiel Schloss, Ancient Chinese Ceramic Sculpture, Stamford, 1977, pl. 47

Exhibited

Greenwich, Bruce Museum, Seeking Immortality: Early Chinese Ceramics from the Schloss Collection, 20 September 1998 - 3 January 1999, no. 108A.
Santa Ana, Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Seeking Immortality: Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection, 6 October 1996 - 16 March 1997, no. 108A.
New York, China Institute in America, Art of the Six Dynasties, 29 October 1975 - 1 February 1976, no. 56.

Lot Essay

See Ancient Chinese Ceramic Sculpture, Stamford, 1977, p. 197, where Ezekial Schloss in discussing the present lot notes that the horse embodies the transition from the Northern Wei sculptural tradition, as seen in the small ears and slender legs, to the more realistic presentation of the Tang period. An example similar to the present lot, but in which the rider and horse were constructed from a single mold, is illustrated by Annette L. Juliano in Bronze, Clay and Stone: Chinese Art in the C.C. Wang Family Collection, Seattle, 1988, no.58.
The results of Oxford Authentication Ltd. thermoluminescence test no. C299k65 and Oxford thermoluminescence test no. 466u56 are consistent with the dating of this lot.

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