LATE SHANG DYNASTY, ANYANG PERIOD (12TH-11TH CENTURY BC)

Details

A BRONZE RITUAL WINE VESSEL, GU
LATE SHANG DYNASTY, ANYANG PERIOD (12TH-11TH CENTURY BC)
The mid-section and spreading lower body of the slender vessel are crisply decorated with taotie masks set against a leiwen ground and separated by scored vertical flanges. There are bird motifs on the narrow upper register of the lower body, and four blades of stylised cicada design rising from the mid-section, decorating the flaring neck. The interior of the foot is cast with a single graph. The surface has a mottled pale greyish-green patina with areas of malachite encrustation.
11 ¾ in. (29.8 cm.) high

Provenance

With Rare Art, Inc., New York, before 4 June 1975.
From an important private European collection.

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Lot Essay

The interior of the foot is cast with a single graph of unknown reading, although it is likely to be a personal name. Two early Western Zhou bronze vessels bearing similar graphs are illustrated by Wang Tao and Liu Yu in A Selection of Early Chinese Bronzes with Inscriptions from Sotheby's and Christie's Sales, Shanghai, 2007, nos. 257 and 258, sold by Sotheby's in 1988 and 1981 respectively.

Compare with a gu of similar form and decoration in the Freer Gallery of Art, illustrated in The Freer Chinese Bronzes, Washington, 1967, vol. I, pp. 58-63, no. 8. A gu illustrated by R. Bagley also features similar flanged taotie, leiwen and cicada ornamentation (see R. Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, Washington D.C. and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987, pp. 240-241, no.33. )

Another example is illustrated in J.J. Lally & Co. Chinese Archaic Bronzes: The Collection of Daniel Shapiro, New York, 2014, pp. 14-15, no. 3.

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