AN ANDESITE FIGURE OF GANESHA

JAVA, INDONESIA, 10TH/11TH CENTURY

JAVA, INDONESIA, 10TH/11TH CENTURY
26 3/4 in. (68 cm) high

爪哇 印度尼西亞 十/十一世紀 安山岩象神像

The mischievous "Remover of Obstacles", Ganesha is worshipped to bless both the start and success of almost any undertaking. In Indonesia, he is still revered today as an important patron of the arts and sciences. Deftly carved from a volcanic stone sourced locally on the island of Java, Ganesha is here depicted with four-arms, seated on a lotus base with the soles of his feet touching. This sculpture of the elephant-headed god is a superlative example, exhibiting great sensitivity for the animal in the soft modelling of the face and trunk.

This sculpture was produced during a cultural renaissance in Java under the Indianized Shailendra dynasty. The Javanese kingdom prospered from lucrative trade networks expanding west through the Strait of Malacca, and north to China. Though the Shailendras are best known for patronizing one of the world's greatest Buddhist monuments, the colossal stupa of Borobudur, they also sponsored Hindu temples. Borrowing from Indian iconography, Javanese artists created sculptural programs for these monuments with their own local artistic proclivities, frequently resulting in icons exhibiting a quiet authority, like the present Ganesha. Like the Buddhas of Borobudur, this Ganesha shows a remarkable softness in the modelling of the forehead, eye sockets, and trunk. The remarkable depth of the original stone block afforded the sculptor vastly more surface area on which to carve his subject's gradual contours – at least twice that seen on most Indian steles of Ganesha.

This lot is especially refined when compared to the handful of stone Javanese seated Ganeshas in American museums. For example, while Ganesha is supposed to have a dwarfish physique, in contrast to examples in the University of Michigan Museum of Art (1957/2.56) and the Brooklyn Museum (69.125.7), his relaxed posture and bodily proportions feel more natural. Compared to an important, earlier seated Ganesha in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1984.486.7), the present rendition is a less anthropomorphized, yet more approachable version of the beloved deity. The quality of its carving, deep profile, and stylistic treatment of its jewelry are shared by two Hindu Javanese sculptures of Durga and Brahma attributed to the 10th-11th century in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena (P.1997.3 & P.1998.1), providing useful reference points for its dating.

Provenance:
Fraysse & Associés, Paris, 26 September 2007, lot 51
Ex-Collection of Robert Schrimpf, Paris