Expressively carved with a serene expression and deep-cut lines, beneath a large bulbous nose and slanting narrow eyes, all between large pendulous ears, the stone reddish beige. Height head 34.5 cm. Height with stand 44 cm.
Wear.
Provenance
Property of a private Swedish collector, long term member of the Swedish Oriental Ceramics Society, who started to collect in the early 1980's.
Literature
Animated like portraits of luohans occurs sometimes in the Sichuan Province, which has a long tradition of depicting lively, caricature-like effigies of humans, as is evident in some of its pottery figures of entertainers, such as a figure of the grimacing drummer in the Sichuan Provincial Museum; see R.Bagley, Ancient Sichuan: Treasures from a Lost Civilization, Seattle, 2001, p.298, no.111. A more naturalistic trend in sculpture was initiated by Song dynasty sculptors, who also often depicted human figures with animated, expressive faces. This trend continued into the subsequent Yuan and Ming dynasties. Two sandstone sculptures of arhats, one with a tiger, the other with a dragon, were discovered in 1980 at the Boshan Temple site in Fu county, Shaanxi Province; see H.Rogers, China 5000 Years: Innovation and Transformation in the Arts, New York, 1998, no.177.
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