WINTER EXHIBITION 2008 - Roger Keverne

30 ROGER KEVERNE WINTER 2008
21
A fine gilt-bronze figure of a Buddhist acolyte
Late Ming dynasty
Height: 12D in, 31.1 cm
standing, leaning slightly forwards, with his hands held together before him. His head is tilted
upwards and his features bear a happy, smiling expression; his hair is cast in three topknots
with chased details and he wears an earring. He is dressed in long robes, tied about the chest
and waist, and a scarf, falling over his shoulders and around his arms to the ground; the edges
of the scarf and the back of the apron are chased with lotus flowers on a ring-punched ground,
and scrolls. Traces of original pigments remain to the head.
This acolyte is often known as Golden Boy, and is an attendant of Guanyin.
For a related gilt-bronze example, see d’Argencé, Chinese Korean and Japanese Sculpture,
The Avery Brundage Collection, no. 115, pp. 294–5, dated Song; and, for a Qing version, see
Palace Museum, 50 Selected Gems of Cultural Relics – newly collected in the Palace Museum
in the last fifty years, no. 168, pp. 130–1. Note also a large Song dynasty wood example
illustrated in Priest, Chinese Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pl. CXII, cat. no. 65.