LATE SHANG DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC

This powerful, minimally carved block, is characteristic of stone animal carvings of the Shang dynasty. Two very similar white marble figures of water buffalos were amongst a group of white marble animals dated to the second half of the Yinxu period excavated from tomb 1500 at Xibeigang, Anyang, Henan, and now in the collections of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, King Wu Ding and Lady Hao: Art and Culture of the Late Shang Dynasty, National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 19 October 2012 - 19 February 2013, p. 224, nos. RO14451:1 and RO14451:2. These two figures are of comparable size (28.3 and 28.2 cm. long) to the present figure. Also illustrated are two white marble figures of tigers and two figures of dragons, which all share the same minimalistic style of carving.

Compare, also, a similarly abstract marble buffalo of slightly smaller size (21 cm. long), also dated to the Shang dynasty, in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Sedgwick, London, illustrated in the Catalogue of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, 1935-36, Royal Academy of Arts, London, no. 268A. Another, of even more simplified form, and smaller size (6 in. long), is illustrated in the catalogue, An Exhibition of Chinese Stone Sculpture, C.T. Loo & Co., New York, 1941, no. 4, pl. II (bottom). The general shape of this latter sculpture is similar to that of the present and Sedgwick water buffalos, but the area of the legs is only implied, and if there had been any facial features they have been worn away.