Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr : STATUETTE DE GUANYIN A L'ENFANT EN PORCELAINE BLANC DE CHINE XVIIIe siècle (2024)

XVIIIe siècle

A DEHUA FIGURE OF GUANYIN AND CHILD
18th century
Finely modelled seated in a relaxed pose on a high openwork rockwork base, dressed in a voluminous gown falling in ample folds around her shoulders and legs tied with a leaf-shaped knot at her chest, below a ruyi-pendant on beaded necklace, her face with serene features, her hair gathered and hidden under a cowl, her arms supporting a small boy seated on her lap against her raised right leg, the boy holding a lotus pod in his right hand and clutching the Guanyin's robe with his other hand, a book placed on a small rockwork ledge to her left side, covered overall with an unctuous white glaze, the back with the mark He.
32 cm (12 1/2 in) high

十八世紀 德化窰白釉送子觀音像

Provenance:
Acquired by the grandparents of the present owner in Munich in the early decades of the 1920s, thence in the family by descent.

來源
現藏家之祖父母於1920年代初於慕尼黑入藏，後經家族流傳至今

This well modelled figure of Guanyin shown with an infant boy in her lap represents Songzi Guanyin, the maternal, feminine emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara also known as the 'Child-Giving' Guanyin. She belongs to a small group of figures of this subject that was revered by worshippers in the late Ming and early Qing dynasty in their wish for healthy children and male heirs who ensured the continuity of the family and future generations to continue the rituals of ancestral worship.

The 'Avalokiteshvara with a child' iconography may have been inspired by images of the Madonna and Child, introduced to China by Jesuit missionaries in around 1600. Ceramic groups of this subject such as the present example were made in the Dehua kilns Quanzhou, Fujian, during the late Ming and early Qing dynasty as several examples ranging in date from the early 17th to the 18th century illustrate. Compare, for instance, a figure of Songzi Guanyin sold in Christie's Hong Kong, 16 and 17 January 1989, lot 856; a figure sold by Sotheby's Hong Kong, 4 May 1994, lot 298; another example was illustrated in S Marchant & Son, Blanc de Chine, London, 1994, cat.no.10, two further figures of Songzi Guanyin were exhibited and illustrated in S. Marchant & Son, Blanc de Chine, London, 2006, cat.nos. 20 and 29.

A seal mark reading He stamped on the back of the figure refers to He Chaozong, the most celebrated potter of the Dehua kilns, believed to have been active during the Jiajing and Wanli periods of the Ming dynasty. Known for his attention to detail, the naturalistic rendering of drapery and rocks and the sensitive modeling of faces, fingers and feet, the range of subjects bearing his mark includes figures of standing and seated Guanyin, Luohan, Damo and Buddhas. However, the He Chaozong mark appears only on one other Dehua figure of Songzi Guanyin, today in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (accession no. AK-MAK-658) (Fig. 1).

He Chaozong's works while believed to be numerous, were widely imitated. A number of known variations of the impressed He Chaozong potter's mark are known and published in P.J. Donnelly, Blanc De Chine, London, 1969, pp. 354-355. Among the various marks, Donnelly lists the single-character He mark and notes that it appears in this form only on an 18th century Dehua figure of Guanyin in the collection of Chingwah Lee, see P.J. Donnelly, ibid., p. 278 and p. 354, F1b. Compare with the figure of Songzi Guanyin in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, bearing the mark of He Chaozong (accession no. AK-MAK-658) (Fig. 1).