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A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 1
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 2
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 3
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 4
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 5
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 6
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 7
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 8
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 9
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 10
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 11
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 12
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 13
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 14
A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE) (2) image 15
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Lot 1

A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures
Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE)

Chinese Works of Art and Paintings
15 March 2021, 10:00 EDT
New York

Sold for US$10,200 inc. premium

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A Pair of Rare Large Painted Wood Figures

Eastern Zhou Dynasty (4th Century BCE)
Elegantly but simply carved as standing attendants, most likely female, each with a large oval 'Brancusi-like' modernist head with large and striking scooped-out ovals to each side of the face topped by arched brows, two large black-painted almond-shaped staring eyes centered by a slender nose bridge with triangular tip, a simple down-turned crescent incised for the mouth with traces of red pigment, each missing one of the large ears pierced for earrings, traces of painted robes in red, black and earthy-beige pigments to the ribboned and hemmed garments that show traces of double-tied-sashes with circular bi-like discs attached down the narrow sides and a simple red-pigment band below the shoulders on the backs, the robes fall gracefully in a gently spreading cone from the high-waisted bust to the hems at their feet, each with rounded shoulders and out-curving slender arms with square mortise holes carved to accept separate hands, losses.
28in (71cm) high (2).

Footnotes

東周 木俑一對

PROVENANCE
Renzo Freschi Oriental Art, Milan, Italy, 2008

LITERATURE
Renzo Freschi Oriental Art, Miti e Riti (Myths and Rituals), Milan, 2008

來源
Renzo Freschi Oriental Art, 意大利米蘭, 2008年

出版
Renzo Freschi Oriental Art, Miti e Riti (Myths and Rituals), 米蘭, 2008年

Far more common amongst funerary-furnishing survivals are the non-organic and less perishable pottery figures and vessels. It is therefore quite unusual to find wood figurines that have survived the vicissitudes of burial and time. Particularly those buried in the 4th century BCE. And how extraordinarily modern in our eyes do these sculptures appear today? Such figurines were placed symbolically in burial tombs to serve the deceased on their difficult spirit journey. They can also be seen as a form of ancestor worship, so crucial a part of Confucian philosophy and the duties of filial piety.

For another tall (23 1/2 inches high) painted wood figure dated to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, circa 3rd Century BC, and also displaying simple but powerful geometric facial features, see J.J. Lally & Co. Oriental Art, Two Thousand Years of Chinese Sculpture, New York, 2008, no. 2, where the author cites others from that group that were discovered in Changsha, Hunan in 1936 at sites associated with the ancient state of Chu and first shown in the United States at the Yale University of Fine Arts and published in the catalogue, An Exhibition of Chinese Antiquities from Ch'ang-sha: Lent by John Hadley Cox, New Haven, 1939.

For another figure, see Eskenazi, Early Chinese Art, 8th Century-9th Century AD, June-July, 1995, pp. 86-87, no. 45. Their example bears a quite obvious black-checked pattern to the clothing (mostly lacking in ours) that relates to a group of wood figures from a tomb of the State of Chu, Wuchangyidi, in Jiangling, Hubei, which are also painted with long strings of jade beads and pendants (which ours display), see Teng Rensheng, Lacquer Wares of the Chu Kingdom, Hong Kong, 1992, p. 109, figs 32:1-4. See also a fascinating line drawing of pectoral and girdle ornaments on wooden figures from Chu tombs at Xinyang, Henan province and Jiangling, Hubei province, illustrated in China 5000 Years, Innovation and Transformation in the Arts, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998 p. 64, fig. 12.

For a pair of much smaller figures (15 1/2in high) dated to the Western Han Dynasty, see J.J. Lally & Co., Ancient Chinese Ceramics and Tomb Sculptures, New York, 2000, no. 10, where they cite another pair of wood figures excavated from a Western Han tomb in Maojiayuan, Jiangling county, Hubei province that were also included in the exhibition Lacquerware from the Warring States to the Han Periods Excavated in Hubei Province, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Art Gallery, 1994, no. 82.

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