SOUTHERN SONG OR JIN DYNASTY, 12TH/13TH CENTURY

Details

A RARE PAINTED WOOD FIGURE OF GUANYIN
Southern Song or Jin Dynasty, 12th/13th Century
The bodhisattva shown seated in maharajalilasana atop a rockwork base, with right arm elegantly resting atop the raised right knee and left hand placed behind the left leg to take some of the weight of the relaxed body, wearing scroll-carved bands on the upper arms and simpler bracelets at the wrists, also a foliate necklace and flower-decorated beaded chains gathered at the waist before continuing in loops behind each leg, the long scarf draped over the shoulders and right arm and the skirt crisply carved to fall in graceful folds around the body, the sensitively carved face framed by the waves of the hair dressed in knotted plaits on the sides and drawn up into two loops gathered by a ribbon behind the elaborate, openwork headdress centered by the seated figure of Amitabha, with traces of polychrome pigments
39½in. (100.3cm.) high

Provenance

Jakob Goldschmidt, Berlin

Literature

Osvald Sirén, "Studien zur Chinesischen Plastik der Post-T'angzeit", Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, XIV (1927-1928), p. 10

Exhibited

Berlin, Chinesische Kunst, January 12 - April 2, 1929, no. 488

Further details

See illustration and detail preceding pages

Lot Essay

While the present piece is unusual in its size, falling as it does between the life-size figures, and the altar-top representations, it may be compared sylistically to a number of examples in western museum collections. See the wood Guanyin dated 12th to 13th century in the City Art Museum, St. Louis, illustrated by Laurence Sickman and Alexander Soper, The Art and Architecture of China, Middlesex, 1956, pl. 80a, and illustrated in color in The Saint Louis Art Museum Handbook of the Collections, St. Louis Art Museum, 1991, p. 31. Compare, also, the life-size figure of Guanyin with a more rounded chest area dated 12th or 13th century, originally from Shanxi and now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, illustrated by William Watson, Style in the Arts of China, Middlesex, 1974, no. 72, and again by the same author in Art of Dynastic China, New York, 1987, no. 449. See, also, the heavier figure of a Guanyin dated to the 12th century, in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, Watson, op. cit., 1987, p. 195, no. 94.

It is probable that this is a representation of the water and moon Guanyin on a rocky platform, and its original setting would have been a "rockwork grotto" amid "bamboo", "water" and other "vegetation" in a temple, with a "jade maiden" and boy attendant. For a more elaborate representation of the water and moon Guanyin dated to the 11th/12th century, see The Nelson-Atkins Museum, A Handbook of the Collections, New York, 1993, p. 310, top right

Stylistically, this figure is a good representation of the post-Tang, more feminine type of Guanyin, shown in a more relaxed and humanistic mode