YUAN DYNASTY (1279-1368)

Details

AN UNUSUAL GROUP OF PAINTED GREY POTTERY FIGURES AND A CART
YUAN DYNASTY (1279-1368)
Comprising four female peasants, four horses and a cart; each woman standing sturdily atop a base with one hand modelled to hold an implement, and one also carrying a rolled piece of cloth, all dressed in a tunic tied around the waist with a thick sash and worn over loose pants tucked into boots, two wearing hats atop hair worn in knotted braids, the other two with their hair gathered up under a scarf; two of the horses depicted saddled, the other two depicted as pack animals, with a tiger skin stretched over the top of one of the bulging packs; the two-wheeled cart with a long roof extending over the poles and with openings in all sides through which can be seen a graceful hound lying in front of two recumbent rams; all well detailed and with faint traces of red and white pigment
Women 12in. (30.5 cm.) high; horses 9¾ in. (24.8 cm.) high; cart 17½ in. (44.5 cm.) long, lucite stand (9)

Provenance

Christie's, New York, 22 March 1999, lot 270.

Lot Essay

Compare the very similar standing figure with conical hat but longer robes, shown with a horse loaded with a pack covered with a tiger skin, excavated from the Heshi tomb, Hu county, Shaanxi province, now in the Shaanxi Provincial Museum, illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji; diaosu bian, vol. 6, Beijing, 1988, no. 57. Refer, also, to The Quest for Eternity, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1987, nos. 96-99, where a group of similar figures is illustrated. They are part of a group of twenty such figures that were excavated in 1956 from the Yuan tomb of Duan Jirong at Qujiangchi, Xi'an.

The result of Oxford Authentication Ltd. thermoluminescence test no. C199b36 is consistent with the dating of this lot.

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