Footnotes

Provenance:
Acquired from Leon Wannieck, Paris, in the late 1920s (according to Johanna Ploschitzki's notes).
Collection of Johanna Ploschitzki (Hansi Share) (1887-1981), Berlin (until 1941).
Collection of the Museum am Rothenbaum. Kunst und Kulturen der Welt (MARKK), Hamburg (1941-2024).

Exhibited:
Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK), 1941-2024.
Steppen und Seidenstrassen, 12 March - 02 October 2021, Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK), Hamburg, no. 127.

Published:
Maria Katharina Lang and Rahel Wille, Steppen und Seidenstrassen, Hamburg, 2021, pp. 126-128.

唐或更晚 大理石雕佛首

來源
於1920年代末於巴黎得自Leon Wannieck（據Johanna Ploschitzki筆記記錄）
Johanna Ploschitzki（即Hansi Share）（1887至1981年）私人收藏，柏林（至1941年）
羅騰堡世界文化與藝術博物館（即MARKK）藏品，漢堡（1941至2024年）

展覽
羅騰堡世界文化與藝術博物館（即MARKK），1941至2024年
《Steppen und Seidenstrassen》，2021年3月12日至10月2日，羅騰堡世界文化與藝術博物館（即MARKK），漢堡，編號127

出版
Maria Katharina Lang 及 Rahel Wille，《Steppen und Seidenstrassen》，漢堡，2021年，頁126至128

This impressive marble head of Buddha was originally in the collection of Johanna Ploschitzki (1887-1981), a Berlin native who emigrated to the USA in 1939 where she remarried and was known as Hansi Share, acclaimed inventor of the 'Monica doll'. In the 1920s, Johanna and her first husband Hermann Ploschitzki were successful business owners, Hermann Ploschitzki co-owned a chain of large department stores in and around Berlin. With their daughters Ingeborg and Marion, they lived in a magnificent villa in the affluent Berlin neighbourhood of Dahlem. After the death of Hermann Ploschitzki in 1932, and the rise of the National Socialists, Johanna Ploschitzki and her daughters emigrated to the USA in 1939 where they started a new life. The family's Berlin assets which included the large villa in Dahlem and an important art collection, were confiscated by the National Socialists, the contents of their home including the Chinese art collection sold at auction in Hamburg in 1941. The marble head and six other Chinese objects were purchased at the sale by the Museum am Rothenbaum (today MARKK) in Hamburg. In 1948 Johanna Ploschitzki filed a claim to have her property and her art collection restituted. In 1950, with exception of the marble head, all Chinese objects acquired by the museum were returned to the family. In 2021 a researcher discovered the Ploschitzki provenance of the Buddha head. A simple spelling mistake had removed any links between the head and the forced sale in 1941. The head was finally restituted to the heirs of Johanna Ploschitzki in June 2024, 83 years after being stolen from the rightful owners, the Ploschitzki family.

Berlin in the 1920s was an important center for the trade in Chinese art, culminating in the Exhibition of Chinese art (Ausstellung Chinesischer Kunst) at the Berliner Akademie der Künste in 1929. Berlin was home to several important dealers specializing in early Chinese art as well as collectors of Chinese art, among them Johanna Ploschitzki and her husband. By the late 1920s, they had built an extensive collection of Chinese art. Photos of the interior of their magnificent villa in Berlin Dahlem show Chinese furniture and paintings, cabinets full of tomb figures and Song ceramics elegantly placed in different rooms of the house. Johanna Ploschitzki noted that she 'owned an extensive collection of snuff bottles, a wonderful collection of jades, a collection of Tang objects, well known amongst fellow collectors, and a collection of 17th and 18th century Chinese porcelains'. The inventoried lists that Johanna Ploschitzki compiled in 1948 for the restitution claim detail the contents of the house and include several pages of Chinese works of art, listing each item and the name of the dealer from they had purchased it. They reveal that Ploschitzkis visited the most reputable Chinese art dealers at the time in Berlin, Munich, London and Paris including Otto Burchard, Erich Cassirer, Edgar Worch and China Bohlken in Berlin, Bernheimer in Munich, Yamanaka in London, C.T. Loo, La Compagnie de la Chine and Leon Wannieck in Paris.

The marble head was purchased from Leon Wannieck in Paris who sold Johanna Ploschitzki several examples of Chinese sculpture. On the listing compiled for the restitution claim, the head appears under no. 625 and Johanna Ploschitzki noted that it is a 'wonderful head'. She also remembers that the head was displayed in the library of the Dahlem home, to the left of the fireplace. In a picture taken by Martha Huth in the early 1930s, the head is clearly visible to the left of the large portrait painting acquired from Yamanaka in London. Leon Wannieck was a Vienna-born dealer in Chinese art, based in Beijing and Paris. Wannieck travelled extensively in China and acquired many early jades, Buddhist sculptures, ceramics, paintings and furniture which he sold in his Paris gallery. He was very active on the board of newly founded Musée Cernuschi, and sold as well as donated many pieces to the museum's collection, among them several important pieces of Buddhist sculpture including a very large free-standing 6th century white marble stele of the seated Buddha, reputedly from Hebei (accession number M.C.8763). When Leon Wannieck passed away in 1931, his obituary described him as the foremost dealer in Chinese art in Paris.

This impressive head of Buddha is modelled with vivid realism, his expression dignified and conveying utter spirituality. The naturalistic representation of this head reflects the sculptural style that developed in the late Tang dynasty and that was to define the sculptural tradition of subsequent dynasties. Carved entirely in the round, this large head would originally been part of an impressive, free-standing sculpture of Buddha. In the Tang period, most large-scale Buddhist sculptures were carved from stone, often associated with cave temples, the stones ranging from soft sandstone to a very hard limestone. In the Liao/Jin period, Buddhist sculpture was mostly carved from wood. In the Tang and later periods, very few large scale sculptures were carved of marble as the use of this material was restricted to imperial tombs and select temples. It appears that extant examples of Tang dynasty free-standing marble sculpture belong to a later phase of development. Compare with a large marble torso excavated in Xi'an and illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji. Diaosu bian, vol. 4, Beijing, 1988, pl. 53, and with another large marble torso on a pedestal sold in Christie's New York, 18 March 2016, lot 1404.