![[FROM THE COLLECTION OF BENJAMIN EVERETT GILL] TWO BRONZE FIGURES OF FEMALE ATTENDANTS](https://media.app.artisio.co/media/104cbde6-0d38-43cb-9e0f-bb721ef57bcf/inventory/839f0a07-cf73-43e0-9971-7a8fedc8a87c/e5f75cf2-1ac6-4327-85c4-e018b245168d/0001_fgABSd_original.jpg)
[FROM THE COLLECTION OF BENJAMIN EVERETT GILL] TWO BRONZE FIGURES OF FEMALE ATTENDANTS
MING TO QING DYNASTY
£353
Auction: 13 March 2024 from 10:00 GMT
Description
明至清 銅龍女立像（共兩件）
each similarly rendered standing, wearing a long robe and cloud collar, holding an attribute with both hands, hair neatly tied up as high lobbed chignon, on a podium (2)
Dimensions
23cm high each; 1374g and 1499g
Provenance
From the collection of Benjamin Everett Gill (1838-1901) from Aberdeen. Benjamin E Gill was a shipwright with Hall, Russell & Company. He built and sailed to Japan in 1869 on the Jho Sho Maru with Thomas Blake Glover who had commissioned the vessel. After they arrived in Nagasaki in January 1870, Thomas B Glover sold the boat to the Kumamoto Domain and that started the Japanese navy. A collection of Asian Art was brought back to Scotland by 1884 when Benjamin E Gill got married. The illustration shown Benjamin E Gill in Nagasaki in the early 1870s.
The collection was passed down by direct descent to the current owner's father and mother, Michael Peter Gill (1934-2015) and Shiona Airlie (1953-2023), and subsequently grew. Michael P Gill was the head of art at George Watson's College, and Shiona Airlie, who had a lifelong love of everything Chinese, its history, culture and language, was the author of Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1989) and Scottish Mandarin: The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston (2012). Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, KCMG, CBE was a Scottish diplomat and colonial official who served as the tutor and advisor to Puyi, the last emperor of China.