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Expert’s note
The present lot is one of the largest known gilt-bronze Han bears ever made. Among examples of this type, distinguished by the distinctive pose, yawning, and raised paw scratching the ear, it is certainly the largest known and by far the most powerful and primal. The familiar gesture introduces an almost human note of humor, yet the creature remains emphatically wild. It appears to roar and grin at the same moment, combining spontaneous observation with an overwhelming sense of primordial force.
The image of the yawning bear scratching his back, sometimes also stretching himself, emerged as a distinctive motif during the Han dynasty, when bears became remarkably prominent in the visual arts, appearing in bronze, jade, lacquer, and as sculptural supports and weights. Rather than presenting the animal in a static or heraldic pose, Han artists frequently depicted the bear engaged in vigorous bodily movement: twisting, stretching, raising its head, and opening or contorting its jaws as if yawning or forcefully exhaling.
Such imagery was closely compatible with contemporary concepts of daoyin, the cultivation of the body through stretching, controlled movement, and breathing. The Western Han Daoyin tu, excavated in 1973 from Mawangdui Tomb 3, sealed in 168 BC, is preserved in the Hunan Museum, while a reconstruction is held in the Wellcome Collection (fig. 1). Among its 44 exercises is a figure inscribed xiongjing, or ‘bear walk’, in which the practitioner assumes the animal’s hunched shoulders, firmly planted stance, and lowered, claw-like hands, translating the bear’s physical power into a practice intended to promote health and longevity (fig. 2).
The extraordinary popularity of the bear acquired particular resonance during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (Han Wudi, r. 141-87 BC) (fig. 3), whose intense pursuit of longevity and immortality profoundly influenced the religious and artistic culture of his court. Wudi patronized ritual specialists and seekers of immortality and showed a sustained fascination with the paradisiacal realms of the xian, or immortals. Within this cultural environment, the bear—with its associations with physical strength, qi, bodily cultivation, and life-prolonging practices—became an especially appropriate image. The stretching and yawning animal can thus be understood within the wider intellectual world of Wudi’s reign, in which the disciplined movement and renewal of the body were intimately connected with the aspiration to extend human life and ultimately transcend mortality.
Far beyond its symbolic associations with vitality and longevity, the Han-dynasty bear developed a remarkably powerful sculptural language of its own. With its exaggerated movement, expressive features, and radical simplification of the animal form, it achieved a degree of abstraction that appears strikingly modern to the contemporary eye, the present lot being a brilliant example of this appearance.
These qualities would find remarkable echoes two millennia later in the work of modern sculptors, who similarly reduced animal forms to their essential volumes and gestures. In this sense, the Han bear forms an intriguing bridge between the expressive abstraction of ancient Chinese art and the formal experiments of twentieth-century modernism.
With its timeless form and commanding expression, the sculpture conveys a striking presence that resonates deeply with contemporary aesthetics. Its simplicity gives it a modern sensibility, underscoring the enduring appeal of expressive animal forms across all cultures and eras of mankind. Modern sculptors have frequently drawn inspiration from aesthetic qualities of African, Oceanic, and ancient Chinese art under the umbrella of primitivism, particularly the fluid abstraction and stylized forms found in early bronzes, ritual figures, and masks.
Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Constantin Brancusi incorporated the principles of simplification, elegance of form, and symbolic abstraction, translating these aesthetic concepts into modernist sculptures. Their work demonstrates how the enduring formal language of ancient artifacts continues to inform contemporary artistic expression, bridging cultural and temporal boundaries.
See Henry Moore’s bronze Animal Head sold at Christie’s New York, 14 November 2018, lot 524; Constantin Brancusi’s Phoque II (a marble seal) in the Centre Pompidou, inventory number AM 816 S; Fran?ois Pompon’s Polar Bear in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, object number 30.123ab; Fran?ois-Xavier Lalanne’s Ours, a standing bronze bear for the proposed Central Park Zoo Garden, sold at Christie’s New York, 11 December 2025, lot 137; Pablo Picasso's Baboon and Young in the Museum of Modern Art, object number 196.1956; and Joan Miró's Moonbird, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, object number 2002.456.121.
Powerfully cast, the seated bear has the left hand resting on the corresponding knee and right raised to scratch his back just behind its ear, the head is modeled in a bestial expression with large bulging eyes and the mouth wide open in a yawning roar with sharp fangs and the long tongue lolling to one side. The fleshy body with muscular thighs, rotund belly, and dropping chest. The back of the head and the underside each with a circular aperture. The eyes neatly incised.
Provenance: A highly important private collection in Vienna, Austria, and thence by family descent. The private collection of Rosalynn Phoa-Bacher and Christoph Bacher, Vienna, acquired from the above circa 2015. Christoph Bacher is a prominent Viennese collector, curator, and gallerist specializing in ancient art, with a particular emphasis on the civilizations of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. After studying history at the University of Vienna, he spent almost two decades in journalism, serving as a member of the editorial board of a major Austrian weekly newspaper magazine. Alongside this career, Bacher and his wife, Rosalynn Phoa-Bacher, assembled a distinguished collection of ancient and contemporary art, curated exhibitions, and became closely involved with contemporary Asian art. Their longstanding interest in archaeology eventually led Christoph to establish Christoph Bacher Archeology and Ancient Art in Vienna in 2015, followed by a second gallery in 2017. The business has since earned an international reputation and is a member of both IADAA and CINOA.
Condition: Excellent condition, commensurate with age. Extensive wear, casting irregularities, traces of prolonged burial, rubbing to the gilt, and few minuscule losses due to deep corrosion around the apertures. The bronze with a rich, naturally grown patina with distinct areas of malachite encrustation. The gilding is exceptionally well preserved.
Metallurgy: Scientific metallurgical analysis (SEM) of the present bronze revealed an alloy composed of 91.3 ± 2.7% copper, 8.2 ± 0.4% tin, and 0.5 ± 0.4% lead, corresponding to a copper-rich, low-lead tin bronze. This composition is fully consistent with metallurgical data obtained from excavated Han-dynasty bronzes. Analyses of early Western Han bronzes from Gejiagou, for example, recorded tin contents ranging from approximately 4 to 14%, while broader archeometallurgical studies demonstrate the extensive use of copper-tin and copper-tin-lead alloys throughout the Han period. Particularly significant are scientific analyses of gilt-bronze objects excavated from the Han royal tomb at Qufu, which identified copper-based substrates containing tin and comparatively low levels of lead together with mercury-amalgam gilding. The gilding of the present figure was likewise identified as mercury gilding, employing approximately 18.8-karat gold, a technique firmly documented in excavated Western and Eastern Han contexts. The combination of a copper-rich tin-bronze substrate, very low lead content, and mercury-amalgam gilding therefore corresponds closely with established Han-period metallurgical practice. The predominantly copper-sulfide inclusions detected within the metal are compatible with ancient copper production from sulfide-bearing ores and present no inconsistency with the proposed dating.
Weight: 607 g
Dimensions: Height 13.8 cm
The bear has been a popular totemic emblem in China since ancient times. China’s foundation myths hold that the legendary Yellow Emperor, or Huang Di, early on lived with his tribe in the northwest, presumably in modern Shanxi province, but then later migrated to Zhuolu, in present-day Hebei province, where he became a farmer and tamed six different types of ferocious beasts, including the bear, or xiong, with which the Yellow Emperor ever since has been linked.
According to legend, Gun—said to have been the great-grandson of the Yellow Emperor and the father of Yu the Great, or Da Yu—stole a special soil with which he planned to build dikes in an attempt to control the Yellow River’s constantly recurring and very devastating floods; he failed in his mission, however, and, as punishment for his theft, he was killed by Zhurong, the God of Fire. Gun’s corpse turned into a yellow bear, or huangxiong, and jumped into a pool; several years later, a golden bear—alternatively said to be a golden dragon—emerged from the corpse’s stomach and ascended into heaven, where the Yellow Emperor instructed it to complete its father’s work in taming the Yellow River’s waters. That bear turned out to be none other than Da Yu, who, according to popular belief, heroically controlled the floods and became the mythological forefather of China’s Xia dynasty. Thus, even if its exact symbolism has never explicitly been stated, the bear has been prominently associated with legendary rulers and national foundation myths since earliest times.
From the Han dynasty onward, and probably even much earlier, bears have been linked with military prowess, shamanism, and immortality. As a corollary, it might be noted that the words for ‘bear’ and ‘virility’ are exact homonyms, not only in modern Mandarin Chinese, in which both are pronounced xiong, but also in ancient Chinese, a connection that likely speaks for itself in terms of symbolism. Bears were depicted in Chinese art at least as early as the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1050 BC), as evinced by three jade bears excavated in 1976 from the tomb of Lady Fu Hao (died c. 1200 BC), Anyang, Henan province, and by a jade bear in the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection at the Harvard Art Museums, object number 1943.50.308.
Literature comparison:
Compare a closely related gilt bronze figure of a bear, dated Han dynasty, in the Cernuschi Museum, reference number M.C. 2011-1. Compare a closely related gilt bronze mat weight in the form of a bear, dated Western Han dynasty, 17.3 cm tall, in the Cleveland Museum of Art, accession number 1994.203. Compare a closely related gilt bronze figure of a seated bear, dated Six Dynasties period, 16.5 cm long, in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, object number B60B487.
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s New York, 17 March 2015, lot 1
Price: USD 2,853,000 or approx. EUR 3,552,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A superb gilt-bronze figure of a seated bear, China, Western Han dynasty
Expert remark: Compare the slouching pose with rounded features, the rich gilding, and expressive modeling. Note the much smaller size (7.6 cm).
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