Lot 52. A painted pottery figure of a caparisoned horse, Northern Wei dynasty (386-534; 21cm high. Sold for €17,920 inc. premium. © Bonhams 2001-2023

Well modelled standing four-square on a rectangular base, with a gracefully arched neck and a small head crisply detailed with flared nostrils, open mouth and pricked ears, the broad rump protected by leather strapwork armour suspending foliate tassels, the neck and back similarly spanned by tassel-strung straps, the back covered with a saddle draped with a cloth, with fringed ends gathering in folds each side of the saddle above a flared mud-guard combed with markings in imitation of fur, traces of pigment.

Provenance: Acquired in Paris by the grandfather of the present owners before 1935, and thence by descent.

Note: Several examples of pottery horses identical in size, style and quality to the present caparisoned horse and all acquired in the late 1920s and early 1930s, indicate that they may all have come from the same archaeological context, compare, for instance, a caparisoned horse of the same type formerly in the collection of George Crofts and now in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (accession number 920.5.95), illustrated in Osvald Siren, Histoire des Arts Anciens de la Chine, vol. III, La Sculpture de l'Époque Han à l'Époque Ming, Paris and Brussels, 1930, pl.338. Another figure of this type from the collection of Henri d'Ardenne de Tizac, Paris, is published in Henri d'Ardenne de Tizac, La Sculpture Chinoise, Paris, 1931, p.29, fig.XII.