A RARE BRONZE DANCING FIGURE HAN – SIX DYNASTIES |

the fluidly poised female figure depicted in ecstatic dance with one leg raised and torso gently swayed backward, her left arm extended holding a tube, with head swung backward looking at a curved leafy spray sprung from her raised right hand, unclad except for an elaborate woven collar around her shoulder and a loincloth fastened by a twisted belt suspending two wide straps incised with geometric patterns on the reverse, her face with a cheerful expression, framed by a pair of pendulous ears and hair elegantly coiled into a swirling chignon, wood stand

A Hong Kong private collection.
Collection of Ed o'Neill, August 2000.
Eskenazi Ltd, London.

The figure is in unusually good condition with just minor chips and bruises to the fragile extremities, including the tips of the tendrils and edges of the tube. The entire surface is suffused with an attractive malachite encrustation.
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This delightful figure of a female performer was probably conceived as a candle or lamp bearer. She is holding in her hands the supports of now missing light fixtures and would have been fitted to a plinth with the tenon attached to her left foot. The figure seems to capture the moment of juggling an object high in the air. While she lifts her right leg and big toe in an effort to balance, her smiling face conveys joy. Entertainers such as acrobats, dancers and musicians were among the many foreigners travelling to the Chinese capitals of Luoyang and Chang’an during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). They performed at the imperial court or in rich households and were represented both in pottery and bronze. The present figure probably portrays one of those entertainers sent as tribute from a foreign country that had been conquered in the course of the Han territorial expansion.

Figures of bronze lamp or candle bearers are well known from the funerary items found in Han tombs. Usually cast in the static form of kneeling servants, figures of performers do not otherwise appear to be recorded in such a lively snce.

The current figure’s non-Chinese appearance, notably the high-ridged nose, the curly hair tied in a knot and the semi-naked attire, evokes that of an Eastern Han period (AD 25-220) bronze lamp bearer in the Hunan Provincial Museum, Changsha, illustrated in Jonathan Tucker, The Silk Road. Art and History, London, 2003, fig. 98, together with a virtually identical lamp holder of the Dong Son culture (c. 1000 BC – 1^st century AD), datable around the 1^st century AD and reportedly found in Northern Vietnam, fig. 99.

These two near identical objects, which have been discovered more than 550 miles apart, reflect the extensive cultural exchange between China and its southern border states. In 111 BC, the Han troops defeated the independent kingdom of Nanyue, composed of present-day Northern Vietnam, Guangdong and Guangxi. The founder of Nanyue, Zhao Tuo (r. 203-137 BC) was originally a Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) general, who had fled to the south after the fall of the Qin. The succeeding king, Zhao Mo (r. 137-122 BC), is known to have kept close cultural ties with China, as witnessed by the presence of both Han period and Dong Son culture artifacts in his tomb, see Tucker, op.cit. p. 85.

Compare a related figure of a kneeling lamp bearer from the Dong Son culture, discovered at La Truong, Hau Loc district, which displays an attire similar to that of the current figure, in the National Museum of Vietnamese History, Hanoi and illustrated in John Onians, Atlas of World Art, London, 2004, p. 90.