A bronze figure of ascetic Shakyamuni Buddha, Yuan / Ming dynasty | 元 / 明 銅苦行釋迦牟尼坐像

Moreau Gobard, Paris.

Moreau Gobard，巴黎

This figure depicts Shakyamuni practicing extreme asceticism in the wilderness during his search for enlightenment. During this time, he realized that such self-punishment was ultimately futile, and he eventually attained enlightenment through meditation and the Middle Path of balance and moderation. 

This representation of the Buddha became especially popular in China during the Yuan dynasty and continued into the Ming and Qing periods. Such representations were associated with the Chan school of Buddhism, which encouraged more individualistic paths to enlightenment. However, Sherman Lee and Wai-kam Ho note in Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 1968, p. 124, that 'the prototype could be traced back at least to Kuan-hsiu's Sixteen Arhats of the Five Dynasties period, or Buddhist paintings of the ninth and tenth centuries showing hermits and the familiar figure of Vasu in Tun-huang and Central Asia'. 

A very similar figure from the Warren Cox Collection, attributed to the Ming dynasty, is included in Hugo Munsterberg, Chinese Buddhist Bronzes, Tokyo, 1967, pl. 122. A gilt-bronze Ming dynasty figure is illustrated in Jintong foxiang [Gilt-bronze Buddhist Sculptures], Beijing, 1998, pl. 17. Another closely related example, attributed to the Yuan period, was formerly in the Water, Pine, and Stone Retreat Collection and sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 4th April 2012, lot 164. Compare also a lacquered gilt-bronze figure with a patterned robe from the collection of Mrs Walter Sedgwick, included in the Oriental Ceramic Society exhibition The Arts of the Ming Dynasty, London, 1957, cat. no. 292, and sold in our London rooms, 2nd July 1968, lot 37. 

For stylistically similar examples in other media from the Yuan dynasty, compare a gilt-lacquer wood figure in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (accession no. 29.172), and another wood figure in the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham (accession no. 1979.316), illustrated in John H. Seto, Handbook of the Oriental Collection: The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, 1988, pl. 64. See also the large and impressive gilt-bronze ascetic Shakyamuni in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (accession no. 1966.116). 

The dating of this lot is consistent with the results of a thermoluminescence test, Oxford Authentication Ltd., sample no. C119p28.