An Egyptian Bronze Figure of a King, 30th Dynasty/early Ptolemaic Period, circa 380-250 B.C.

kneeling and extending his hands in an offering gesture, and wearing a pleated royal kilt, wide belt decorated with groups of vertical striations, and the nemes-headcloth with fragmentary uraeus and queue, his broad face with long eyebrows and cosmetic lines, the arms cast separately.

Harold S. Vanderbilt (1884-1970), Newport and Palm Beach
Francis M. Bacon III (1900-1982) and his wife the photographer Antoinette (Toni) Frissell (1907-1988), New York, received in 1932 as a wedding gift from the above
by descent to the present owners

A very close parallel, possibly a pair with the present example and once part of the Choiseul-Gouffier collection sold in Paris in 1818, is in the Rijksmuseum, Meermanno-Westreenianum in The Hague, inv. no. 71/ 110 (A. W. Byvanck, Gids voor de bezoekers van het Museum Meernanno-Westreenianum, vol. I, 1912, p. 81 [71], pl. XI (as probably 18th or 19th Dynasty), F.J.E. Boddens Hosang, De Egyptische verzameling van Baron van Westreenen, pp. 48-49, pl. 17 [a, b], and Marsha Hill, Royal Bronze Statuary from Ancient Egypt: With Special Attention to the Kneeling Pose, Leiden, 2004, no. 135, p. 198. For other kneeling bronze kings of the Late Period see Marsha Hill with Deborah Schorsch, Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples, New York, 2007, figs. 52, 53, and 55.

The Vanderbilt family traveled to Egypt in 1887, a journey which included the very young Harold Stirling Vanderbilt and his older sister Consuelo, later Duchess of Marlborough. Two albums of photographs by Antonio Beato, now housed at the University of California, were probably assembled for that trip.