Lot 1628. A superb and very rare Dehua figure of Damo seated in meditation, China, Ming dynasty, early 17th century; 10 5/8 in. (27 cm.) high. Estimate USD 200,000 - USD 300,000. Price realised USD 317,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2014

The finely modeled figure is shown seated in dhyanansana on a straw or grass mat, and wears a voluminous monastic robe that falls in graceful folds around the body, his clasped hands hidden within the long sleeves. The face is sensitively modeled with downcast eyes and a contemplative expression, enhanced by the curly eyebrows, mustache and goatee below the delicateurna centering the forehead. The figure is covered overall in a creamy glaze of ivory tone that pools to pale olive tone in the recesses. A square seal, Chen shixin yin (made by Chen Shixin), is impressed on the back, wood stand.

Provenance: Edward T. Chow Collection, Part III; Sotheby Parke Bernet (Hong Kong) Ltd., 19 May 1981, lot 459.
Private collection, South America.
The Chinese Porcelain Company, New York.
Private collection, South America.

Literature: M. Beurdeley and G. Raindre, Qing Porcelain, Famille Verte, Famille Rose, London, 1987, p. 243, fig. 336 (right).
The Chinese Porcelain Company, 17th and 18th Century Chinese Porcelain from Distinguished Private Collections, New York, 2002, pp. 22-23, no. 7 and on the cover.
J. Ayers, Blanc de Chine, Divine Images in Porcelain, New York, 2002, p. 77, no. 28.
Sotheby's Thirty Years in Hong Kong 1973-2003, Hong Kong, 2003, p. 150, no. 134. 

Exhibited: 17th and 18th Century Chinese Porcelain from Distinguished Private Collections, The Chinese Porcelain Company, New York, October 2000.
Blanc de Chine, Divine Images in Porcelain, China Institute Gallery, China Institute, New York, 2002.

Note: Seated in peaceful contemplation, this superb figure embodies a profound spirituality achieved through the remarkable plasticity of drapery and form, the unencumbered serenity of the face and the near-perfect fusion of body and glaze. It represents the historical monk known as Damo in China, Daruma in Japan and Bodhidharma in India, whose teachings eventually became the foundation of Chan (Zen) Buddhism. The pose of this figure perhaps recalls the nine years Damo spent in a cave, facing a wall and meditating (Denise P. Leidy, Donna Strahan, et al., Wisdom Embodied, Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010, p. 162). Damo is also often depicted standing barefoot on a reed leaf, representing the episode when he crossed the Yangtze River in this manner to evade pursuers. Variously described in early texts as a monk of Central Asian or Persian origin, and later as of South Indian or Tamil origin, ibid., p. 162, the face of the figure, with broad, flat nose and heavy-lidded oval eyes, reveals the features of a person of non-Chinese origin.

Chan Patriarch Bodhidharma, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), 17th century. Porcelain with ivory glaze (Dehua ware). H. 11 3/4 in. (29.8 cm); W. 7 1/2 (19 cm); D. 5 1/2 in. (14 cm). Gift of Mrs. Winthrop W. Aldrich, Mrs. Arnold Whitridge, and Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse, 1963, 63.176 © 2000–2017 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

The figure bears the rare mark of Chen Shixin, an unrecorded artist of obvious exceptional skill, who presumably worked in the Dehua region in the early part of the seventeenth century. Two very similar figures, seated on mats and exhibiting the same facial features and luxurious treatment of the garment, but without potter's marks, have been published: one in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, ibid., pp. 162-63, no. 43, and the other with a crackled glaze from the Eumorfopoulus Collection, now in the British Museum, London, illustrated by R.L. Hobson in The George Eumorfopoulus Collection Catalogue, vol. IV, London, 1924, pl. LIX, fig. D286, and by Jessica Harrison-Hall in Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, p. 515, no. 17:14. The workmanship shown on these two figures is so similar to the present example that it is possible that they were also created by the potter Chen Shixin. All three can be firmly dated to the early part of the seventeenth century based on stylistic similarities, particularly in the treatment of the robe, to standing figures of Damo bearing the mark of the famous Dehua potter He Chaozong. One such standing figure in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Zhongguo meishu quanji; gongyi meishu bian, vol. 3, Beijing, 1988, p. 51, fig. 142, and another is illustrated by John Ayers in Blanc de Chine, Divine Images in Porcelain, New York, 2002, p. 76, fig. 27. Although the details of He's life remain obscure, the existence of at least two Dehua figures bearing his mark and a cyclical date has led scholars to place his work in the early part of the seventeenth century (see Ayers, Blanc de Chine, p. 74. no. 25, for a figure of Guanyin inscribed with a cyclical date corresponding to 1619; see, also, Robert Blumenfield, Blanc de Chine, The Great Porcelain of Dehua, Berkeley, 2002, p. 165, figs. A & B, for a figure of Guanyin seated before an aureole bearing an inscription that includes a cyclical date of 1618). A figure of Guanyin with a He Chaozong mark that can also be used as a benchmark for dating this figure of Damo, modeled in a similar seated pose on a reed mat and exhibiting similar treatment of the robe, is in the Museé Guimet, Paris, and illustrated in Oriental Ceramics, The World's Great Collections, vol. 7, Tokyo, 1981, col. pl. 31, p. 159, no. 31.