DOI Heft:
Nr. 332 (January 1925)
DOI Artikel:Comstock, Helen: Tomb figures of old China
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19984#0049
mceRnACionAL
T'ANC MUSICIANS In the Pennsylvania Museum
other women in Chinese history and art. It is famous Cave of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-
singular that she is the only woman ever shown huang—they were capable of making the more
semi-nude. Her fondness for bathing may have pliable clay eloquent. This figure is twenty-two
led to this for there many pictures of her at the inches high and is of the dark clay typical of the
bath. Her weakness for wine is the subject of period. Also of the Wei dynasty is the soldier in
what seems to us a very dignified garden scene helmet and scarf whose broad face and general
with a lady and an attendant entitled "Yang air of cock-sureness stamp him as "one of the
Kuei-fei Drunk but Still Drinking." people." The contrast between him and the
Of all the figures illustrated here the oldest is official represents a fine distinction made between
of a servant boy of the Han period (206 B. C.-221 the lower orders and the nobility. The grooms
A. D.). He is an amusing youth, a sturdy, serious, and servants and soldiers express natural vitality,
inquisitive peasant boy who looks amazingly a heartiness of manner, and have an unaffected
Dutch. He stands about six inches high and like bearing which was no doubt theirs in life. Those
all Han pottery figures is of a hard, light-colored of high estate, like the official and court ladies,
clay covered with a light greenish glaze. He does were governed by rigid and elaborate rules of
not suggest a conventionalized type, but a definite etiquette which reduced their manners to a science
individual a "character," guileless but possessing and their faces to a formula.
a native cunning. The next in age is the official The two early Tang figures of stable boys are
of the Wei dynasty. The Wei were Tartars from also of dark clay, like the Wei figures, although
Siberia who appeared on the Chinese border about the majority of T'ang figures are of a light colored
260 A. D. and who ruled China from about 386 clay. However, these particular pieces may be
to 557. No two authorities agree as definitely on only slightly younger than the Wei specimens, for
the length of Wei rule. This figure is modeled with the intervening dynasty, Sui, lasted only about
a suavity which shows how well the newcomers thirty years. The T'ang period began in 618 and
had clothed themselves witli the already ancient lasted until 906. The stable boys have a dis-
Chinese culture. It illustrates, too, the well- tinctly negroid cast of countenance and furnish
known Wei smile, a much subtler smile than that one of many examples among the tomb figures of
of the archaic Greek statues, more flexible and the variety of racial types which mingled in China,
more sinister. The Greek smile is aloof, above Others are the Armenian, the Jew and the Persian
this world; the Chinese is human, uncannily from the Pennsylvania Museum and the black-
understanding. Since the Wei were accustomed faced Arabic stable boy from a private collection
to work in the more difficult medium of stone— in New York. The face of the latter is actually
they cut the rock temples at Yun-kang and the tinted black to give it verisimilitude, but this is
JANUARY 1925
three hundred ni
T'ANC MUSICIANS In the Pennsylvania Museum
other women in Chinese history and art. It is famous Cave of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-
singular that she is the only woman ever shown huang—they were capable of making the more
semi-nude. Her fondness for bathing may have pliable clay eloquent. This figure is twenty-two
led to this for there many pictures of her at the inches high and is of the dark clay typical of the
bath. Her weakness for wine is the subject of period. Also of the Wei dynasty is the soldier in
what seems to us a very dignified garden scene helmet and scarf whose broad face and general
with a lady and an attendant entitled "Yang air of cock-sureness stamp him as "one of the
Kuei-fei Drunk but Still Drinking." people." The contrast between him and the
Of all the figures illustrated here the oldest is official represents a fine distinction made between
of a servant boy of the Han period (206 B. C.-221 the lower orders and the nobility. The grooms
A. D.). He is an amusing youth, a sturdy, serious, and servants and soldiers express natural vitality,
inquisitive peasant boy who looks amazingly a heartiness of manner, and have an unaffected
Dutch. He stands about six inches high and like bearing which was no doubt theirs in life. Those
all Han pottery figures is of a hard, light-colored of high estate, like the official and court ladies,
clay covered with a light greenish glaze. He does were governed by rigid and elaborate rules of
not suggest a conventionalized type, but a definite etiquette which reduced their manners to a science
individual a "character," guileless but possessing and their faces to a formula.
a native cunning. The next in age is the official The two early Tang figures of stable boys are
of the Wei dynasty. The Wei were Tartars from also of dark clay, like the Wei figures, although
Siberia who appeared on the Chinese border about the majority of T'ang figures are of a light colored
260 A. D. and who ruled China from about 386 clay. However, these particular pieces may be
to 557. No two authorities agree as definitely on only slightly younger than the Wei specimens, for
the length of Wei rule. This figure is modeled with the intervening dynasty, Sui, lasted only about
a suavity which shows how well the newcomers thirty years. The T'ang period began in 618 and
had clothed themselves witli the already ancient lasted until 906. The stable boys have a dis-
Chinese culture. It illustrates, too, the well- tinctly negroid cast of countenance and furnish
known Wei smile, a much subtler smile than that one of many examples among the tomb figures of
of the archaic Greek statues, more flexible and the variety of racial types which mingled in China,
more sinister. The Greek smile is aloof, above Others are the Armenian, the Jew and the Persian
this world; the Chinese is human, uncannily from the Pennsylvania Museum and the black-
understanding. Since the Wei were accustomed faced Arabic stable boy from a private collection
to work in the more difficult medium of stone— in New York. The face of the latter is actually
they cut the rock temples at Yun-kang and the tinted black to give it verisimilitude, but this is
JANUARY 1925
three hundred ni