Coco Li
Cataloguer / Sale Coordinator, Chinese Works of Art
This auction has ended. View lot details
You may also be interested in
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF MARGARET ROEBLING PERRINE
Lot 45
A LARGE AND IMPRESSIVE DEHUA BLANC DE CHINE FIGURE OF YULAN GUANYIN 1780-1880, impressed Boji Yuren sealmark (virtue extends to all, even, fishermen)
15 September 2025, 09:00 EDT
New YorkSold for US$20,480 inc. premium
Looking for a similar item?
Our Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
Dessa Goddard
Senior Vice President, US Head, Asian Art Group
I-Hsuan Chen
Senior Specialist
Michael Hughes
Vice President and Head of Department
A LARGE AND IMPRESSIVE DEHUA BLANC DE CHINE FIGURE OF YULAN GUANYIN
1780-1880, impressed Boji Yuren sealmark (virtue extends to all, even, fishermen)
The tall, elegant figure standing leaning slightly forwards and to her (proper) left and with downcast eyes and beatific smile, wearing a tiara centered by Amitabha Buddha, her long strands of hair knotted at her shoulder and her voluminous robes with many folds and with pendant jewelry hanging from her tied waist band and falling towards her bared feet as she stands amidst flowering lotus on a domed wave base, she clutches her lower robes with her (proper) left hand and holds a basket with a fish at its center in her right, an impressed square seal to the center of her back and shoulders.
19 1/4in (49cm) high
(wood stand).
The tall, elegant figure standing leaning slightly forwards and to her (proper) left and with downcast eyes and beatific smile, wearing a tiara centered by Amitabha Buddha, her long strands of hair knotted at her shoulder and her voluminous robes with many folds and with pendant jewelry hanging from her tied waist band and falling towards her bared feet as she stands amidst flowering lotus on a domed wave base, she clutches her lower robes with her (proper) left hand and holds a basket with a fish at its center in her right, an impressed square seal to the center of her back and shoulders.
19 1/4in (49cm) high
(wood stand).
Footnotes
1780-1880 年 《博及漁人》印款 德化白瓷魚籃觀音
For another large (19 inch) figure of Guanyin from the Richard de la Mare collection, with Dehua and (apocryphal) Wanli marks but dated to the late eighteenth century, in a similar pose (though without the fish basket) with head downcast and with her left hand grasping and pulling the folds of her robes upward, and also standing on a lotus encrusted domed wave base, see P. J. Donnelly, Blanc De Chine, p. 253, pl. 77c. See also another very large Yulan Guanyin sold at Christie's New York, Blanc de Chine: Dehua Porcelain from the Galster-Ireland Collection, 23 July 2013, lot 1, dated to the 19th-20th century.
A figure depicting Guanyin as Maio-shou (Yulan) holding a fish basket, with the seal of Zhang Shoushan, and another by He Chaozong with a basket of fish supported on rockwork, P. J. Donnelly, op. cit., p. 157, pl. 138B and p. 154, pl. 152E respectively. See also slightly small figure of Guanyin, Christie's East, New York, The Estate of Rev. W Haynsworth, 6 October 1992, lot 2, with a fisherman mark.
For a late 19th or early 20th century ink rubbing on paper of Yulan Guanyin from a Ming dynasty carved stone dated to 1617 and with the carver named as Dong Daben, in the Princeton University Art Museum, object no. y1958-176, see https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/collections/objects/57583, where it is noted that the depiction of the bodhisattva Guanyin in the manifestation of a young lady with bare feet carrying a basket with a fish, illustrates the variously told tale of a beautiful lady in the Tang dynasty who was offered marriage by many suitors. She agreed only if a suitor could memorize a series of Buddhist sutras. However, on the night of her wedding she was found dead. Later, a monk opened her coffin, and nothing was left except bones linked by a gold chain, the sign of a holy personage, particularly a bodhisattva.