*A RARE PAINTED GRAY STONE FIGURE OF A FEMALE ATTENDANT

TANG DYNASTY

Details

*A RARE PAINTED GRAY STONE FIGURE OF A FEMALE ATTENDANT
Tang Dynasty
Shown standing on a square base with arms crossed as she looks straight ahead, wearing a shawl over a short jacket with short sleeves falling in soft folds around the upper arms, the long, tight sleeves of the undergarment carved with curved creases, also wearing cloud-toed shoes curving up from beneath the hem of the long skirt, her face with gentle features and her hair drawn up into a topknot, with traces of white and red pigment remaining on the fine-grained, dark gray stone
25in. (64.8cm.) high

Provenance

Collection of Tonying & Co., Parke Bernet Galleries, April 14-15, 1954, lot 337

Lot Essay

This figure was part of a group of nine stone figures from the Collection of Tonying & Co. offered at Parke Bernet Galleries in 1954. In a preface to the sale of these pieces it is stated that they were excavated from an early Tang dynasty Imperial tomb found in the vicinity of Xianfu (Xi'an), Shaanxi province in Northwest China

Another figure of a female attendant from this same group is illustrated by Annette Juliano, Bronze, Clay and Stone: Chinese Art in the C.C. Wang Family Collection, Seattle and London, 1988, pl. 74. The two figures are very differently attired and have different hair styles. All of the figures in this group, which consisted of three female attendants, three male attendants and two horses, are raised on a square or rectangular plinth. This same feature can be found on four smaller stone figures, also from the Xi'an area, excavated from the tomb of Zheng Rentai, dated to 664 A.D., a satellite tomb of Zhaoling, the mausoleum of Emperor Tang Taizong in Liquan County, illustrated in Wenwu, 1972:7, p. 42, fig. 15 (3 and 4)

A pigment analysis is consistent with the dating of this lot