page_title: Yixian glazed pottery luohans
section_title: History in the art world
hierarchical_section_title: Yixian glazed pottery luohans / History in the art world
caption_attribution_description: Exhibit in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This exhibit is old enough so that it is in the public domain, and photography was permitted in the museum. I took this photograph and release it into the public domain.
context_page_description: A set of life-size glazed pottery sculptures of luohans usually assigned to the period of the Liao dynasty was discovered in caves at I Chou in Yi xian or Yi County, Hebei, south of Beijing, before World War I. They have been described as "one of the most important groups of ceramic sculpture in the world." They reached the international art market, and were bought for Western collections. At least eight statues were originally found, including one large fragment which was long thought to have been destroyed in Berlin during World War II, but has been sighted in Russia recently.
  Others are now in the following collections: the British Museum in London, two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Penn Museum, Philadelphia, Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, the Musée Guimet in Paris, and a Japanese collection. With the example lost in Berlin, this makes a total of ten figures. There are fragments probably from the same set in other collections.
context_section_description: The figures were reportedly in the hands of Chinese dealers who told the German sinologist Friedrich Perzynski about them in 1912, and subsequently showed him examples, some of which he bought and exported to Europe. They had apparently been found in one or more caves near Yixian, Hebei, some 100 miles south-west of Beijing in northwestern China.   Perzynski claimed that he visited the cave the luohans had come from, by which time only a few fragments remained there. He described the episode in an article for Deutsche Rundschau soon after, repeating his story in a book published a few years later, but the accuracy, indeed the veracity, of his account has been challenged in recent years.
  In 1913 two figures were exhibited in Paris (without their bases), and a third (with base) was acquired by the British Museum in 1914, see Seated Luohan from Yixian.  Now six figures are in museums in North America, with two surviving and one missing or destroyed in Europe, and one of the set in Japan.  The Metropolitan acquired its two examples separately in 1921, by which time Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto and the Matsukata Collection in Japan already had theirs, and a further four were "owned by private collectors and dealers", so making a total of ten figures, "besides a great many small fragments, several hands and feet, and baskets full of broken pieces".
  The figure long thought lost from the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst in Berlin is a head and bust length fragment, 60 cm high, of a younger man with his head turned to his left, and his shoulder bared.  In his 2011 lecture Derek Gillman reported that Stanley Abe, a fellow specialist, had recently been shown it in a storeroom of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The figure in Paris is an uncertain member of the group, very similar overall, but with differences in the posture of the shoulders and its stippled design on the robes. Many scholars question whether it really belongs with the group.
  To a surprising degree, the number of surviving pieces differs between sources.  Most older sources say there were eight, including the Berlin figure. Three of these, those in Boston, Japan and Ontario, are reported to have later heads. This may explain why William Watson in 2000 wrote that "Five Luohan in sancai pottery are preserved in Western museums", presumably excluding the example in Japan. The group of nine as listed by Laurence Sickman and others includes the examples from Berlin (as "present location unknown") and Japan (as "Matsukata Collection") but excludes the one now in Paris.  By 2010 Gillman says what is presumably the same Japanese example was in the "Saizon Museum of Modern Art" (more usually "Sezon").
  Several of the current museum web pages mention a group of eight, probably counting Berlin, plus the Metropolitan Museum of Art (with two) in New York City, British Museum in London, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, and Penn Museum in Philadelphia.  The current Penn Museum webpage lists eight surviving figures, including the "Matsukata Collection" but excluding Paris and Berlin. Lecturing in 2011, Derek Gillman, Executive Director and President of the Barnes Foundation, said there were "nine known examples; there's a tenth which may be part of the group, and three are known, er, believed to have been broken".
  The luohan at the Royal Ontario Museum, in the Bishop White Gallery of Chinese Temple Art, was one of the first pieces to be included in the museum's Chinese art collection. Although the piece dates back to the Liao Dynasty (916–1125 CE),  its tri-colour glaze of green, amber, and cream, is reminiscent of elements from Tang Dynasty sculptures.
caption: Luohan at Royal Ontario Museum
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