Lot 343
BLANC DE CHINE FIGURE OF GUANYIN
QING DYNASTY, 18TH CENTURY
Auction: 02 December 2014 at 10:00 GMT
Description
the figure draped in robes and seated cross-legged, holding a small scroll in her hand, with hardwood stand in the shape of a lotus leaf and carved with lotus pods and branches
Dimensions
18cm high (excluding stand)
Footnote
Provenance: Select Items from the Leonard Gow Collection
Note: Born in Glasgow, the son of a shipping magnate, Leonard Gow attended Glasgow University in 1884 to spend a year studying Moral Philosophy. He became senior partner in the shipping company Gow, Harrison & Co, director of the Burmah Oil Company and chairman of several other companies. A noted philanthropist, he founded the Leonard Gow Lectureship on Medical Diseases of Infancy and Childhood in 1919. He was given an Honorary Degree in 1934. Gow was one of the city's greatest art collectors, specialising in pictures, etchings and Chinese porcelain. Indeed, the Leonard Gow collection of Chinese porcelain held at one point the finest collection of Kangxi porcelain in the country. He also had later pieces, examples of which are found in this sale (lot 354).
R. L. Hobson, keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities and Ethnography of the British Museum, wrote of the Gow collection in the Burlington Magazine, 1924: 'It is unfortunate for the devotees of Chinese porcelain in London that this collection is so distant. One has to go beyond Glasgow to see it, but it is safe to say that one would have to travel much further to see a private collection which is better in its own particular line.' We are pleased to say that this is not the case for the selection on offer in this sale.