A GOOD CHINESE BLANC DE CHINE FIGURE OF GUANYIN

A GOOD CHINESE BLANC DE CHINE FIGURE OF GUANYIN
17TH CENTURY

The Goddess sitting wearing a voluminous robe from which her right foot protrudes, the robe opening at the neck to reveal a beaded lotus flower necklace, her right hand resting on her raised right knee, the left holding a scroll and supported on a beast-mask fronted arm rest, her head turned slightly to the left with a serene expression and an urna mark, her chignon held in place by a ruyi-form hair pin, the reverse with an impressed seal mark reading bo ji yu ren, 24cm.

Provenance: from a large European private collection of Dehua porcelain acquired from PJ Donnelly by the vendor's father who was a friend, and thence by descent. PJ Donnelly was a major collector of Blanc de Chine and published his important work Blanc de Chine: the porcelain of Têhua in Fukien in 1969, which was the most exhaustive study of the subject at the time.

Cf. John Ayers, Blanc de Chine: Divine Images in Porcelain, p.83 for a similar 17th century example. The characters bo ji yu ren can be translated as 'virtue extends to all, even fishermen'. Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, has long been attributed as the protector of fishermen and is often shown holding a basket of fish. In Chinese culture it is said that fishermen would pray to her to ensure safe voyages across the South China Sea. This attribution originates from a folk legend describing how Guanyin, incarnated as a beautiful fisherwoman, converted an entire village of unruly fishermen to Buddhism. She promised that she would marry anyone in the village who could recite three Buddhist Sutras. Eventually a man named Ma Lang succeeded in memorising all the sutras, but on the night of their wedding the beautiful woman died. After much time had passed the villagers returned to the grave to move the body, here they found that her bones were linked with gold chains signalling her divinity.

十七世紀 德化白瓷觀音坐像
《博及漁人》款
來源：歐洲德化瓷器私人收藏，由藏家父親從好友PJ Donnelly 購得，之後由其後人繼承。PJ Donnelly是德化白瓷的重要的收藏家，並於1969年出版了他的重要著作《中國白瓷：福建德化的瓷器》，是當時對德化白瓷最詳盡的學術研究。