Exhibited Nayarit San Sebastian Redware Seated Female

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Nayarit, San Sebastian type, Protoclassic Period, ca. 100 BCE to 250 CE. A hollow-built redware pottery female figure seated upon an integral stool with a pair of conical legs. The nude woman sits with bent legs supporting her forward-leaning torso, holds both arms to her abdomen beneath perky breasts, and displays six bulges on each stocky shoulder that scholars posit are 'ritual scarification pellets' meant to increase one's beauty. Her upright countenance bears squinting, coffee-bean-shaped eyes, a tall nose with narrow nostrils, pursed lips, perforated ear lobes meant for additional ornamentation, and a smooth brow beneath a finely striated coiffure. Red and orange slip covers every area of this highly burnished figure and imbues her with the characteristic style of ancient West Mexican figural artistry. Size: 11" W x 23.8" H (27.9 cm x 60.5 cm)

Clay figures like this one are the only remains that we have today of a sophisticated and unique culture in West Mexico. They made no above-ground monuments or sculptures, at least that we know of, which is in strong contrast to developments elsewhere in ancient Mesoamerica. Instead, their tombs were their lasting works of art: skeletons arrayed radially with their feet positioned inward, and clay offerings, like this one, placed alongside the walls facing inward, near the skulls. A large effigy like this one would most likely have flanked the entrance to a tomb in a way that archaeologists have interpreted as guarding. Some scholars have connected these dynamic sculptures of the living as a strong contrast to the skeletal remains whose space they shared, as if they mediated between the living and the dead.

Exhibited in the University of St. Thomas Art Gallery.

For a strikingly similar example of a seated male figure without a stool, please see: Kan, Michael, Clement Meighan, and H.B. Nicholson. "Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico: Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima | A Catalogue of the Proctor Stafford Collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art." Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989, p. 94, fig. 39.

A stylistically similar example of a tattooed male figure seated on a stool, of a larger size, hammered for $27,500 at Sotheby's, New York "Art of Africa, Oceania, and The Americas" auction (May 15, 2017, lot 85).

Provenance: ex-private collection of the late Father Bader, University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, USA; exhibited in the University of St. Thomas Art Gallery, acquired prior to 2000

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#154405
Condition Report: Repaired from multiple pieces, with chips along some areas, and resurfacing with overpainting along most break lines. Abrasions and nicks to stool, limbs, body, and head, fading to original pigment with areas of age-commensurate darkening, with light encrustations, softening to some finer details, and several stable hairline fissures. Nice earthen deposits, great remains of original pigment, and wonderful manganese blooms throughout.