A GOOD CHINESE BLANC DE CHINE FIGURE OF GUANYIN

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

The Goddess sitting with her right knee raised exposing her right foot, wearing long flowing robes which enfold her hands and open at the neck to reveal a ruyi-head necklace, her hair neatly arranged beneath a cowl, her face with a serene expression and an urna mark on her forehead, 20.5cm.

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. Marchant, Blanc de Chine, p.12, no.3 for a closely related figure of Guanyin dated 1610-1640 but with an impressed seal mark for He Chaozong Yin. Another similar figure is illustrated by John Ayers in Blanc de Chine, Divine Images in Porcelain, p.83, no.34.

The Chinese word Guan means 'to see' and Yin means 'sound', so together the two words translate to 'she who always sees and pays attention to listening'.

十七世紀 德化白瓷觀音坐像
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。