The present figure photographed in C. C. Wang's Hong Kong residence in 1983 for Architectural Digest. ‘The Collectors: Of Ink, Clay, and Stone. C.C. Wang in His New York City Residence and Studio,’ Architectural Digest, New York, July 1983, p. 105. The figure is accompanied by another from the tomb, lot 340 in the 1954 Tonying sale, which Mr Wang sold in his important Sotheby’s, New York sale 'The C.C. Wang Family Collection of Important Early Chinese Works of Art', 27 November, 1990, lot 46, being later acquired by J. J. Lally & Co. from whom it was purchased in 1996 by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Washington (No. S1996.37).
The discussion of the the present figure in the C. C. Wang Collection. Annette L. Juliano, Bronze, Clay and Stone: Chinese art in the C. C. Wang Family Collection (Seattle & London, 1988), pl. 74
Figure of a male mourner in the National Gallery of Asian Art, Washington D. C. (No. S1996.37)
Figure of a female attendant from Shaanxi, formerly in a New Jersey Museum
A LIMESTONE FIGURE OF A FEMALE ATTENDANT
Further images
Provenance
Tonying & Co., New York Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 15 April 1954, lot 338
Collection of Mrs M. Hasserman
Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 1st-2nd June 1977, lot 376
J. J. Lally & Co., New York
The Collection of C. C. Wang
Publications
‘The Collectors: Of Ink, Clay, and Stone. C.C. Wang in His New York City Residence and Studio,’ Architectural Digest, New York, July 1983, p. 105
Annette L. Juliano, Bronze, Clay and Stone: Chinese art in the C. C. Wang Family Collection (Seattle & London, 1988), pl. 74
This figure is one of a group of nine excavated from an early Tang dynasty Imperial tomb found in the vicinity of Xi’an, Shaanxi province. As reported in 1954, the tomb is believed to have been owned by the grandson or great-grandson of the first Tang emperor. The group includes figures of seven attendants and two horses, each raised on a square or rectangular plinth base.
One of the male figures is now in the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Washington D. C. (Accession No. S1996.37). This figure was also owned by C. C. Wang and it was photographed in his residence beside the present figure before being sold in his important 1990 Sotheby's sale. A figure of a female attendant, lot 337 in the 1954 Tonying sale and perhaps most similar to the present example, sold on behalf of a New Jersey Museum at Christie’s New York, 25th March 1998, lot 432. Another male figure from the group was sold Christie's, New York, 20 September 2005, lot 140.
Tang limestone counterparts of pottery tomb figures are very rare with only a handful of examples known. The group relates to another of four smaller stone figures, also from the Xi’an area, excavated from the tomb of Zheng Rentai, dated to 664, a satellite tomb of Zhaoling, the mausoleum of Emperor Taizong of Tang in Liquan county.1
Other related figures include an attendant from the J. T. Tai Foundation, sold Sotheby's, New York, 3 June 1985, lot 4. A figure of a musician, formerly in the collection of E. Wolf, was published by Eskenazi Ltd. in Ancient Chinese Sculpture (London, 1978), cat. no. 3 and compared by the author with an example in the Art Museum of Tokyo, exhibited at the International Exhibition in London, 1935-6 and widely published.2 A further stone head and body was illustrated by the Musée Guimet in Tang China: A Cosmopolitan Dynasty, nos. 17-8.
1 Cultural Relics Unearthed (Wenwu, 1972), p. 42, fig. 15 (3-4)
2 Masterpieces from Geijutsu Daigaku, Art Museum of Tokyo Art University (Tokyo, 1977), pl. 74; O. Sirén, Histoire des Arts Anciens de la Chine, vol. III, La Sculpture (Paris, 1930), pl. 88, c; S. Mizuno, Chinese Stone Sculpture (Tokyo, 1950), pl. XIV, no. 30; Tōyō bijutsu, vol. 3, (Tokyo, 1968), pl. 82