A finely carved wood figure of a Bodhisattva China, Song / Jin Dynasty

finely carved as a robust masculine figure with broad shoulders and large rotund belly, seated in lalitasana with the left leg pendent over a ledge and the right leg drawn up to support the draped right arm leaving the fingers curled in a relaxed gesture, the loose skirts spreading over the ledge and secured below the crescent navel by a tied bow with trailing ribbons, the torso left bare but for a simple necklace with garlanded jewels and a diagonally draped scarf tied at one shoulder, with jeweled garters below the knees set with florets, the small rounded head with features carved in benevolent meditative expression below a concave urna and the thick locks of hair drawn rigidly up in a very tall topknot, with some traces of red, green, black and flesh-toned pigments in successive layers of devotional overpainting

In contrast to the more elaborately bejeweled deities and rounded volumes of late Song or Jin dynasty wood sculpture, a small number of figures are known which exhibit a rather quieter demeanor - correspondingly unadorned but for floret garters and simple double-stranded necklaces. A very similar figure of Guanyin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is published in Alan Priest, Chinese Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1944, pl.XCIII, and again in Hai-wai yi-chen: Buddhist Sculpture II, Taipei, 1990, pl.142. Another figure with slightly more complex topknot, in the British Museum, London, is illustrated in Hai-wai yi-chen: Buddhist Sculpture I, Taipei, 1986, pl.133 (four views).

These variations may be due to regional styles, the present group possibly being from Shanxi province, as discussed by Osvald Siren, Chinese Buddhist Sculpture from the Fifth to Fourteenth Centuries, New York, 1925, p.158, and he illustrates the possible mate to the British Museum example, in the Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania, pl.586, and another related figure, pl.588. A related larger wood figure was sold in these rooms 19th November 1982, lot 96, again Christie's Hong Kong, 18th March 1991, lot 343, and subsequently exhibited in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, The Art of Contemplation. Religious Sculpture from Private Collections, Taipei, 1997, no.84.