An unusual archaic bronze 'kneeling foreigner' lamp Han Dynasty

the partially nude figure of a male foreigner clad only in a loin cloth tied around his waist, kneeling and showing off his rotund belly, his large eyes and pointed nose framed by bushy eyebrows, a wispy goatee and mustache, tight curls and pierced ears, his right hand holding a long upright pole wrapped with a dragon supporting a shallow detachable lamp dish with dragon-head handle and three thin hoofed feet, a small pricket on the interior, his left hand holding another lamp support in the form of a small cylindrical measure, and a third support sprouting from the top of his head, the overall surface covered in a light matte azurite, malachite and cuprite encrustation (2)

Acquired in Taipei, Taiwan, 1981.

Ching Wan Society Millennium Exhibition, Taipei, Taiwan, October 2000, cat.no. 125.

lamp with repaired breaks to vertical walls along 1/3 of bowl and extending from beside dragon to under one leg; figure does not appear to show any repairs, there are variations in patina from green-blue to red-orange; under Uv light, the repairs on the lamp show up only slightly darker, the figure has areas of slight orange fluorescing on tips of toes, knees, staff above hand and speckling to torso
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It is very rare to find bronze sculptures of any type and the present figure is unusual in its distinctive representation of a curly-headed, bearded foreigner. Bronze figures are particularly known from Yunnan province, but they generally depict different ethnic groups, with long straight hair and no beards.

A related but stylistically different and more simply rendered kneeling figure holding a spear, also dressed in a loin cloth and with highly stylized curly hair, has been interpreted by Li Xueqin in the exhibition catalogue The Glorious Tradition of Chinese Bronzes, Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, 2000, cat.no.99, as Central Asian or hu, one of the nomadic tribes traditionally classified as Barbarians by the Chinese.

A bronze figure holding a lamp while riding a bixie, excavated from Hefei, Anhui province, and illustrated in Wang Ziyun, Zhongguo diaosu yishu shi (History of Chinese sculptural art), Beijing, 1988, pl. 156, appears to be similar in style and type. Another kneeling figure holding a plain three-leg lamp on a dome base of tigers, in the Wuzhou Municipal Museum in Guanxi, is illustrated in Zhongguo qingtongqi quanji, vol. 12, pl. 100.

A similar figure, also holding a staff entwined with a serpent, but with the left hand missing, from the Daguzhai Collection of Paul Huo, Beijing, and the collection of D. David-Weill, Paris, has been repeatedly exhibited and published, and was included in the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1935-6, cat. no.108, and sold in our London rooms, 29th February 1972, lot 149; another figure lacking the staff and holding an elongated vessel in the left hand, was sold in these rooms, 3rd June 1992, lot 60.