This previously unrecorded Buddhist group falls into the category of wares apparently made for overseas markets in South East Asia, although the present example is unusually large and elaborately potted. The S-scroll relief decoration applied onto the front of the hair clearly resembles the handles found on Yingqing vases of the period, while the jewellery finds its closest equivalent in the larger figure sold in these Rooms, 10 July 1978, lot 171, and subsequently illustrated by A. du Boulay, Christie's Pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics, p.111:5. A smaller figure of this kind was exhibited in Singapore, at the South-East Asian Ceramic Society, South-East Asian and Chinese Trade Pottery, 1979, Catalogue, no.45. Another example is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the gift of Stanley Herzman, illustrated by S. Valenstein in her Catalogue, no.47; the hair decoration is set with the same kind of unusual high-relief S-scrolls. S. Valenstein records that a smaller qingbai figure of a seated Guanyin was found in the late Song Dynasty tomb of Shi Shengzu, who died in 1224, in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province; and a much larger one was excavated in the former Yuan capital of Dadu in Beijing, published in Kaogu, 1972: 6, pl.7. She also points out that it is generally accepted that these early qingbai Buddhist images were produced at Jingdezhen, noting that part of a small figure is in the Museum at the site of the Hutian kiln complexes near the town and the use of zhuizhu (pearl decoration) has been found in the Yuan dynasty products of these Hutian kilns: cf. Liu Xinyuan and Bai Kun, Wenwu, 1980, fig.11:4. See also A. Joseph, Chinese and Annamese Ceramics Found in the Philippines and Indonesia, col.pl.24, from the Ian Wasserman Collection. One of the largest of this group of Buddhist qingbai images is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Judge Edgar Bromberger; it stands 20 inches high and has particularly elaborate pearl ropework decoration on the front of the robes; see Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol.11, col.pl.11.

Very few of these figures can be exactly dated by reference to site excavation evidence. However, one in the Nelson-Atkins Gallery, Kansas City, bears a date of either 1298 or 1299 and has been published by L. Sickman, A Ch'ing-pai Porcelain Figure Bearing a Date, Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, vol.XV, 1961, no.34. See also the Bodhisattva at the Rietburg Museum, published in Sammlung J.F.H. Manten, Chinesische Grabfunde und Bronzen, 1948, p.92, fig.93; the figure of Manjusri at the Field Museum of Natural History, illustrated by S.E. Lee and W.K. Ho, Chinese Art under the Mongols, The Yuan Dynasty, nos.24-36; and the large Avalokitesvara, excavated in Beijing in 1955, exhibited at Burlington House, London, The Genius of China, 1973-4, Catalogue, pp.156, 157, no.362. See also Hong Kong Oriental Ceramic Society, Jingdezhen Wares: The Yuan Evolution, 1984, Catalogue, p.32-39, where Philip Wen-Chee Mao discusses these figures within the context of qingbai ceramics, and illustrates four figures as pls. 23, 24, 25, 26 from museum and private collections