A richly caparisoned painted grey pottery horse
Northern Wei DynastyStanding four square on a rectangular base, with long arched neck and slender head held elegantly downwards, an arched forelock of hair between the pricked ears, the body adorned with rich ceremonial trappings including a folded and twisted fringed saddle blanket, a strap supporting seven prominent floral decorated tassels around the chest, and leaf-form pendant tassels to the rump, a decorative undulating cover to the mane with a series of punched holes, the horse painted in a reddish brown tone, with white socks, the leather trappings green, the saddle and mane white and the blanket orange.31cm (12.1/4in) high.
注脚
The Professor Conrad Harris Collection of Early Chinese Art, formed in the late 1990's to early 2000's.Provenance: Berwald Oriental Art, 22 November 1999 (invoice) and label.Published: Eternal Images, Chinese Ceramic Sculpture from the Han to Tang Dynasties, Berwald Oriental Art, catalogue no. 5.The result of Oxford thermoluminescence test no. C199r22 (4 May 1999) is consistent with the dating of this lot.For a painted pottery horse of similar form from the tomb of Madame Gao, dated to 524, Quyang, Heibei, see 'Hebeisheng qutu wenwu xuannji', Beijing, 1980, p.300, No. 172.Another horse with similar trappings from the tomb of Yuan Shao and his wife (d.528) in Luoyang, Henan, is illustrated in 'Kaogu', 1973, Pl.IX: 1.