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Published & Exhibited: Searching for Immortality, Weisbrod Chinese Art, 19 September-6 October 2000, p. 40-41, no. 13.
Expert’s note
Stone figures of elephants are extremely rare, particularly in such a compact format. Its modest proportions indicate that it was created for a domestic Buddhist altar, displayed alongside devotional images of comparable scale. The surviving white slip on the present sculpture identifies the animal as the auspicious white elephant of Buddhist tradition. While the elephant typically served as the mount of Samantabhadra, the absence of a saddle, throne, or other regalia shows that the present sculpture was conceived as an independent image. Its boldly simplified modeling, gently lowered head, and gracefully curling trunk imbue the Buddhist animal with a quiet dignity befitting its sacred character.
China, 618-907. Masterfully yet simply carved standing foursquare on a rectangular base, its stout legs terminating in three-toed feet, the long tail gently swaying to the right, the powerfully rendered head slightly lowered, its subtly wrinkled face with small almond-shaped eyes, the curling trunk rests on the ground flanked by two tusks with gently curved tips, and large tucked ears neatly incised to evoke the veins of a lotus leaf.
Provenance: Weisbrod Chinese Art, New York, United States, by 2000. Collection of Adrienne and John C. Maxwell Jr., New York, United States, acquired from the above, and thence by descent. A copy of an excerpt from an appraisal report by Turner C. Johnson, Jr. Appraisals for the Maxwells, dated 27 February 2012, and stating an insurance value for the present lot of USD 25,000 or approx. EUR 31,500 (converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing), accompanies the lot. Michael B. Weisbrod is a noted scholar of Chinese art, who has published extensively on the subject over a time span of more than 50 years. In 1972, Michael joined his father Dr. Gerald Weisbrod’s Asian art gallery in Toronto, Canada. The father-and-son team opened their New York location on Madison Avenue in 1977, and during the next 45 years the gallery held a significant number of exhibitions, selling to museums and private collectors across the globe, eventually adding further locations in Shanghai and Hong Kong. John C. Maxwell Jr. (1928-2020) was an American financier, market analyst, and distinguished collector of East Asian art. A graduate of Princeton University, where he studied politics, Maxwell served in the Korean War as a battery commander. It was during his military service in Korea in the early 1950s that he developed a sustained interest in Asian art, which grew into a lifelong engagement with collecting, scholarship, and connoisseurship. Following his discharge, Maxwell pursued a career in finance in New York and Richmond, Virginia, becoming known for his analytical work on the tobacco, beverage, and food industries. Together with his wife, Adrienne, he assembled one of the most distinguished private collections of Asian art in the American South, encompassing Chinese, Korean, and Japanese works selected for their historical significance, craftsmanship, and cultural resonance. Maxwell ultimately donated important works from the collection, along with a scholarly library of more than 1,200 books and journals, to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where they formed the foundation of the Maxwell East Asian Collection.
Condition: Good condition with expected wear, traces of weathering and erosion, encrustations, small losses, some of which have smoothed over time, structural fissures, minor old fills, flaking to white slip with corresponding touchups. Displaying exceptionally well.
Weight: 3.1 kg
Dimensions: Height 14.6 cm, Length 24.1 cm
One of the Seven Treasures of Buddhism, the elephant is frequently depicted bearing floral offerings or as the mount of the ‘All-Gracious’ bodhisattva Samantabhadra, known in China as Puxian. Samantabhadra commonly appears in Buddhist triads alongside Buddha Shakyamuni and opposite the bodhisattva Manjushri, traditionally represented riding a lion, the three figures together embodying strength, wisdom and moral purity.
The white elephant is also intimately associated with the birth of Buddha Shakyamuni. According to Buddhist tradition, Queen Maya, the mother of the Buddha, conceived after dreaming of a bodhisattva riding a six-tusked white elephant entering her womb. The white elephant thus came to occupy a particularly sacred place within Buddhist cosmology and is frequently represented with three toes, as in the present example, an allusion to the Three Jewels of Buddhism: the Buddha, the Dharma (the Law) and the Sangha (the monastic community).
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s New York, 19 March 2008, lot 392
Price: USD 241,000 or approx. EUR 326,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A rare small white marble figure of an elephant, Tang dynasty
Expert remark: Compare the related modeling, subject, and size (17 cm). Note the different stone.
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