Figure of Guanyin

18th - 19th century

Guanyin is a bodhisattva who has attained enlightenment but chooses to remain in the world to help others. Since the seventeenth century, porcelain figures, mainly of Buddhist and Daoist deities, became an outstanding product and specialty of dehua.

Dehua porcelain (porcelain modeled with a female figure sitting on a tall, reticulated taihu rock)

19 x 9 5/8 x 6 in. (48.3 x 24.45 x 15.24 cm)

Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection

43.42

Provenance: Yamanaka & Co., Inc, United States, to 1942; [liquidation sale by Alien Property Custodian, Yamanaka & Co., Inc., 1943, lot 1006]; purchased from Yamanaka Liquidation Sale by Seattle Art Museum, 1943

Photo: Paul Macapia

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistoryPortland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Gift to a City: Masterworks from the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection in the Seattle Art Museum, Nov. 3 - 28, 1965. Cat. no. 52.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Porcelain Stories: From China to Europe, Feb. 17 - May 7, 2000.

Published ReferencesFuller, Richard E. Seattle Art Museum. Seattle, Wash.: Seattle Art Museum, 1946; p. 17.

Harding, Beverly. The Secret of Porcelain: A Family Guide. Seattle, Wash.: Seattle Art Museum, 2000; pp. 12, 27.

Finlay, Robert. The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2010; reproduced pl. 3.

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