CHINESE TANG TERRACOTTA MUSICIAN ON HORSEBACK - TL

Ca. 618-907 AD. Chinese Tang Dynasty. An extremely fine moulded terracotta figurine of a female court musician shown on horseback while playing a guitar. The female rider wears long blue robes with her black hair tied in top knot, seated astride the strongly built horse. The horse has been modelled in a naturalistic manner, with details of the anatomical features, harness and saddle emphasised in pigments. Horses were the pride of the Tang, a dynasty of prosperity, military expansion and artistic achievement. In 667 AD, Tang dynasty statues declared the ownership of horses as an aristocratic privilege, forbidding artisans and tradesmen the right to own horses. The Emperor Xuanzong, for instance, displayed great passion for his mounts commissioning paintings from the famed artist Han Gan (c. 706-783 AD). In the Lidai minghua ji ('Record of famous painters of all periods'; 847), Zhang Yanyuan noted that Emperor Xuanzong - loved large horses and ordered Han to paint the most noble of his more than 400,000 steeds'. It is easy to speculate that Han Gan's distinctive style, which emphasizes their powerful, rounded and muscular forms while retaining an easy naturalism, influenced the artisans who sculpted the present horse. This piece has been precisely dated by means of a Thermo Luminescence analysis carried out by Ralf Kotalla, an independent German Laboratory. The samples collected date the piece to the period reflected in its style, whilst also showing no modern trace elements. The TL certificate with its full report will accompany this lot.Size: L:425mm / W:380mm ; 3.75k. Provenance: East Anglian private collection; formerly acquired in the early 1990s in Hong Kong.