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 AN ATTENDANT
Further images
Provenance
Tonying & Co., New York Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, 15th 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 Xianfu (Xi’an), Shaanxi province. All raised on square or rectangular plinths, 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.D., a satellite tomb of Zhaoling, the mausoleum of Emperor Tang Taizong in Liquan county.1
Tang limestone counterparts of pottery tomb figures are rare and only a handful of examples are known. Amongst the figures excavated in Shaanxi is a mourner, now in the National Gallery of Asian Art, Washington D. C. (Accession No. S1996.37), and a female attendant, 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.
Other related figures include an attendant from the J. T. Tai Foundation. A figure of a musician, formerly in the collection of E. Wolf, was published by Ezkenazi Ltd. in Ancient Chinese Sculpture (London, 1978), cat. no. 3 and compared 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