Chinese Buddhist Sculpture in a New Light at the Freer Gallery of Art

By Jan Stuart and Chang Qing

Buddhist stele Northern Qi period, inscription dated 564 Limestone Height 125.8 cm, width 64.1 cm Freer Gallery of Art, F1923.14

The Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, possesses a collection of more than 200 Chinese Buddhist sculptures and devotional objects. The images, in a wide variety of media - ceramic, cloisonne, gilt bronze, iron, ivory, lacquer, wood and, most numerously, stone - are a rich resource for study. The earliest object is a gilt-bronze Buddha dated 451 (see Howard, p. 93, fig. 1), and every dynasty thereafter is represented. There are also a few modern fakes which were unwittingly acquired in the early twentieth century. Recent reassessment of the collection has resulted in an exhibition, `Chinese Buddhist Sculpture in a New Light', co-curated by Jan Stuart and Stanley K. Abe, associate professor at Duke University. The 21 images presented have either never been on public view or have not been displayed in several decades. The scholarship of several significant and aesthetically pleasing objects, which were acquired in the West more than fifty years ago, is investigated and reappraised. Abe's detailed study of a purportedly Northern Wei (386-534) stele is recommended as an in-depth approach to one subject (Abe, 2002). The focus of this article is, however, wider, offering an overview of the exhibition. The inclusion of post-Tang dynasty pieces draws attention to a belated but welcome contemporary interest in later Buddhist art. A few forgeries are also considered as study pieces. The exhibition curators have chosen to explore the often dramatically different opinions that have been offered about these objects in the West. Interpretations of authenticity, regional provenance and date have sometimes proved contentious and in some cases remain under discussion. In identifying works for the exhibition, it was thought best not to present a definitive conclusion about some objects until close comparisons are perhaps someday discovered in an archaeological context. Many noteworthy Buddhist sculptures and devotional objects from historic sites and temples in China entered international collections in the first few decades of the twentieth century, when China's deeply depressed economy fed the antiquities trade. Sculptures were often unscrupulously removed and sold without proper identification. Moreover, they changed hands many times, with each transfer dimming the chances of reconstructing a reliable provenance. At the time, foreign scholars encountered special problems in evaluating Buddhist sculpture that reached the West because of a paucity of well-documented comparisons outside China. The situation was further complicated by a lively trade in forgeries. The legacy of these sometimes masterful imitations continues to challenge contemporary assessments of Buddhist sculptures in foreign museums. Fortunately, the current climate of scholarly exchange with China makes it possible to take advantage of new archaeological discoveries in identifying pieces; visits to cave-temple sites have, in some instances, established the original location of such sculptures. Some of the most important works in the Freer Gallery were removed from China's best-known cave temples, including Gongxian, Longmen and Xiangtangshan (for examples from Xiangtangshan, see Howard, pp. 97-99, figs 6-9). Historically, material from cave temples represented only a fraction of China's Buddhist imagery, which also included huge numbers of free-standing images made for display in wooden temples. However, since there was a great risk with free-standing sculptures of damage and separation from their original source, cave temples offer the most complete resource for systematic study of Buddhist art, despite their natural wear and tear, destruction from Buddhist persecution and significant twentieth century damage. Consequently sculptures associated with cave-temple sites have been some of the best-studied works in the Freer. Three images have long been associated with Gongxian, the Northern Wei cave temple in Henan province; and each sculpture poses unique problems for re-evaluation (Figs 1, 3 and 4). The high-relief image of a bodhisattva holding a lotus bud and flask in Figure 1 was purchased by the Freer Gallery in the early 1950s from C.T. Loo and Company in New York. It was acquired along with two guardian-demon figures from Xiangtangshan that are also included in the exhibition (see Freer Gallery of Art, pl. 77). Prior to its arrival in New York, the bodhisattva image had been in a European collection, a fact that C.T. Loo mentioned in his correspondence with the Freer Gallery. Before a visit by Stanley Abe to Gongxian in 2001 confirmed the original location of the Freer's bodhisattva, attributions had been made based on comparison of general stylistic features. When Osvald Siren visited the Freer in 1962, he noted that the bodhisattva was similar to one owned by the Harvard University Art Museums, and there was also a related piece in Paris (for the Paris piece, see Siren, pls 105a and b, 106). He remarked that despite restoration, the Harvard and Paris sculptures had maintained more of the original `archaic character' than the Freer's. Nonetheless, he considered the Freer image to be genuine. A few scholars have been less accepting, believing that the Freer's relief might be a twentieth century copy, perhaps patterned on the Harvard image before it left China. Although this is not the case, fears about the Freer's image are not ill-founded: its relatively large, evenly shaped background and almost pristine condition defy expectations of an ancient sculpture hacked from a wall. Some have also questioned the correctness of the bodhisattva's plain crown, but this is appropriate for an image on the side wall of a niche located away from the central pillar. The measurements and details of the Freer's carving correspond to a blank area in Cave 1, niche 1, the first niche from the left on the north, or back, wall of the cave (Fig. 2). The bodhisattva was situated to the right of a seated Buddha sculpture, and its mirror image is still in place to the left of the Buddha. When the image is displayed in a museum setting like the Freer, a viewer would encounter the image straight on, but the figure was originally intended to be seen on the bias, with the hand holding the lotus bud facing inward towards the Buddha's shoulder. The outer edge of the bas-relief, which corresponds to the viewer's right, bears traces of flowing drapery that match the depiction of a curtain in the proscenium-like setting of niche 1. The problem with the sculpture is its condition. During its removal from the cave, the bodhisattva was damaged, and the halo and pedestal are now incomplete. The extensive refurbishment before sale to the Freer is of greater concern. There were signs of old water damage in Cave 1 at Gongxian. This may have inspired the sellers to aggressively scrub the side of the figure to the viewer's left, to the extent that there are now no traces of pigment. Worse still, the drapery on that side seems unnaturally crisp and sharp, indicating recutting. In contrast, the right half of the bodhisattva is mostly untouched. However, the face - the mouth and tip of the nose - seem suspiciously touched up. Recent museum conservation has revealed several layers of pigment beneath a top layer of grimy brown pigment on the right side, and now, the hints of green, blue and red which have emerged are consistent with sculptures in situ.

The nearly square, fragmentary plaque decorated with processional figures in Figure 3 was purchased by Charles Lang Freer (1853-1919) from Yamanaka and Company, New York, around 1913. Freer believed it dated to the Tang dynasty (618-906). By 1916, Langdon Warner (1881-1955) had corrected its date to the sixth century. However, he misjudged its origin and attributed the plaque to the Longmen caves. In 1924, the Freer Gallery's director John E. Lodge (1876-1942) made the connection to Gongxian. A courtier, presumably a donor, wearing Northern Wei robes and headgear strides across the plaque with an offering in his hands. Three attendants accompany him, one with a ceremonial umbrella and one with a circular fan. The fragment was removed from a large tableau of grand personages and servants in a procession depicted in three registers on either side of the doorway in the south, or front wall, of Cave 1. Sections of the bottom two registers were removed in the early twentieth century and Figure 3 corresponds to a detail in the lowest tier. Today a modern reconstruction fills the empty space. Recent cleaning of the plaque revealed a surface with many layers of pigment, including greens and reds, that is consistent with the presumed age of the object. However, minor details, such as the manner in which the servants' hands clutch the poles, differ slightly from in situ bas-relief sculptures. This has raised concern that the Freer fragment might be a copy created in the early twentieth century. If this is true, then the location of the missing genuine fragment is unknown. It seems more likely that the Freer's piece is authentic, and the minute discrepancies are the result of numerous hands that participated in the creation of the Gongxian cave temple. The fragmentary bodhisattva in Figure 4 was once owned by C.T. Loo and Company and published by them in 1940 (see Loo Ch'ing Tsai, `An Exhibition of Chinese Stone Sculpture', New York, 1940, cat. no. 8, pl. v). It belonged to Baron Eduard von der Heydt (1882-1964) and did not enter the Freer Gallery of Art until 1978, where it was discovered that the figure consists of four skilfully reattached segments. On the basis of stylistic parallels, including the shape of the crown, the beatific smile and drapery folds on the left edge that indicate a curtain, the bodhisattva was long presumed to be from Gongxian. In a catalogue published by the Freer Gallery of Art in 1979, Gongxian was mentioned as the provenance for this piece (Murray, p. 19). No one has challenged this attribution until recently. Some serious discrepancies have now come to light. The image is thirty centimetres shorter than any of the bodhisattvas in Cave 1 at Gongxian. Moreover, the traces of drapery are difficult to account for as small niches at Gongxian do not usually have depictions of curtains. As diminutive figures at Gongxian are rarely heavily painted like the Freer's, this bodhisattva cannot be from Gongxian. Rather, it is stylistically more compatible with one of the small cave temples that were spread out around the Northern Wei capital of Luoyang, temples which would be unfamiliar to many scholars today. While it was once common practice to label a piece either as `Gongxian' or `fake', scholars now have access to material that encourages the recognition of regional variations of a style. The Freer is home to a few forgeries as well as some sculptures that on balance seem authentic, but which nonetheless elicit concern. A Northern Wei style gilt standing Buddha purchased by the Freer in 1952 from Oriental Art Gallery, New York is an impressive example of a fake (Fig. 5). Based solely upon visual analysis it appears genuine, but recent scientific examination undertaken at the Freer has raised doubts. The metal alloy is brass, a mixture of copper and zinc, which is currently believed not to have been used in China for image-making prior to the fifteenth century. Genuine Northern Wei dynasty images are bronze, and authentic corrosion should consist of malachite, which forms on the surface of copper alloys buried in earth. Here the surface seems to have been treated with acidic solutions containing chloride that can create a green patina, a trick known to forgers. Scientific analysis cannot determine when the Buddha image was made, only that it post-dates the use of brass. However, close replicas of Northern Wei gilt bronzes are not known from historical times, so this Buddha image was probably manufactured in the twentieth century for sale to foreign collectors. Perhaps a mould taken from a genuine altarpiece enabled the forgers to be so successful. Another forgery is the stele of a pensive bodhisattva in Figure 6. Freer purchased it in 1909 in Beijing, believing the work to be from the sixth century. In style and medium, the image approximates stelae associated with Quyang in Hebei province. Fortunately, in 1913 Freer purchased a genuine example of this type from Yamanaka (Fig. 7). The authentic Quyang masterpiece is dated by inscription to 565 and also bears a rededication inscribed in 1516. Its iconographic programme consists of two pensive Maitreya figures seated next to each other beneath a leafy canopy. The Buddhas of the Past and of the Present appear overhead with an image of a stupa at the top. Quyang images often feature paired figures, but the fake that Freer purchased follows a more conventional type of imagery presenting only a single figure. In 1911 Freer acquired two more fakes that seem to be from the same workshop as the stele in Figure 6. They came from Japanese collections; one was purchased in Japan and the other from Yamanaka. All three forgeries are inscribed with spurious dates. Comparison between the sculptures in Figures 6 and 7 demonstrates that at the turn of the twentieth century, the quality of some forgeries was quite crude, but they were nonetheless sufficiently deceptive at the time. In 1916, Langdon Warner embraced the Freer's fakes as authentic, as did C.W. Bishop (1881-1942) at first. But in 1922, Bishop became concerned with the 1911 purchases. However, he apparently never questioned the stele in Figure 6, which was first recognized as a fake by Lodge in 1924. One of the problematic pieces in the Freer Gallery is a very grand stele, allegedly of Northern Qi date (550-77), which was purchased in Beijing for the museum by Bishop in 1923 (Fig. 8). The dark limestone tablet bears an inscription on the reverse dated to 564. Most scholars consider the work authentic; however, the lack of a securely documented or archaeologically recovered parallel image is troubling. Another thorny question arises from its condition. There is surprisingly little natural wear to the surface of the stone, although many of the figures' heads have been hacked and mutilated. Did the savagery result from an anti-Buddhist campaign in antiquity or was the damage intentionally inflicted by modern creators to `antique' the stele? The tablet was clearly broken into five large pieces before it was shipped to the United States, but it is not clear when the breakage happened. In 1933, the gallery's conservators rejoined the segments. The iconography of the stele seems fairly standard. In the top register a Buddha group appears in a central niche, flanked by the supremely wise Buddhist layman Vimalakirti on the right and the bodhisattva of wisdom, Wenshu (Manjushri) on the left, each under a ceremonial canopy. This configuration of Vimalakirti's and Manjushri's debate with a Buddha inserted between them was fairly common during the sixth century. In the register below, the central image presents the historical Buddha with right hand raised in the gesture of reassurance (`abhaya mudra') and left hand lowered in the gesture of granting favour (`varada mudra'). Monks (with heads missing) and matching pairs of bodhisattvas flank the main figure in a conventional arrangement. An awkward detail, however, is the depiction of the Buddha's seat, which consists of a dais with an hourglass-shaped throne beneath it. Usually only one type of seat is depicted. Was this a mistake by a copyist? Minor discrepancies indicate the need to keep an open mind about this piece. With classic monuments such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art's famous `Trubner stele' that also depicts the debate between Vimalakirti and Manjushri coming under convincing attack as modern (Ho, 2001), it is necessary to closely examine all anomalies in a Buddhist sculpture acquired in the early twentieth century. At the same time, the access we now have to numerous images made in regional centres in China and for various social classes, indicates that the breadth of imagery and range of quality that existed in ancient Chinese Buddhist imagery is broader than anyone thought. Buddhist art history is far more complicated than the study of imperially sponsored cave temples and well-known sites suggests.

Although the authenticity of many Buddhist sculptures in the Freer's collection has never been questioned, opinions about their dates have run the gamut. In 1917, Charles Lang Freer purchased the standing bodhisattva in Figure 9 from Yamanaka. He accepted the dealer's sixth century date for the statue, which was said to have come from the Gu Fo An (Temple to Buddha) in west Lu-an village, in Shanxi province. While it has not been possible to document its provenance, the thrusted-hip bodhisattva is a classic Tang dynasty image of the eighth or ninth century. As late as 1959, Siren said that the sculpture `has a good claim to be late sixth century', but in 1925 he had proffered a Liao (907-1125) date. Then in 1962 he revised his opinion to a date of early tenth century. Perhaps the sculpture's heavy gold pigment and slightly damaged diadem have confused scholars in their dating efforts, especially since most of the Tang dynasty sculptures in Western collections are denuded or lightly painted stone. The condition of the gilding suggests considerable age, but it is unclear when it was applied; traces of other colours, mostly red, are visible beneath the gold. In 1913, when Freer acquired the bodhisattva statue in Figure 10 from Yamanaka he accepted the Song dynasty (960-1279) date he was given. Although he did not particularly like the sculpture and thought it inappropriate for exhibition, it was interesting for `comparative purposes'. Although Freer never used the word `Tibetan' in describing the sculpture, he was perhaps making a comparison between the Chinese and Tibetan features in this piece. The distinctive pointed crown with upswept ribbons and large earrings are obvious Tibetan elements, as is the body-shaped nimbus. Holes in the stone suggest that the aureole may have been edged with metal. In 1916, Langdon Warner redated the sculpture to the Ming period (1368-1644) - more specifically, the seventeenth century. The bicultural mix of features caused Lodge to redate the figure once more in 1924, this time to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). When Siren saw the sculpture in 1962, he entered a more specific eighteenth century date and speculated that it must have been made for one of the Qianlong emperor's (r. 1736-95) imperial temples dedicated to Tibetan Buddhism. The combination of Chinese and Tibetan imagery seen in this image actually reflects a much earlier stage of Sino-Tibetan cultural interaction than Siren had imagined. Stylistically the sculpture fits comfortably into the fourteenth century. Comparison with several securely dated works, including sculptures carved into the Feilaifeng cliff in Hangzhou, helped establish a date. The broad, full face, the headdress and jewellery of the sculpture also resemble features of portable metal images dated to the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), some of which have been excavated in Inner Mongolia. Another figure that has been recently redated is a contemplative Buddha carved in ivory (Fig. 11). Ravaged by time, the image has lost most of its original pigment and is fragmentary, broken through a line across the lap. Nonetheless, the figure is majestic. Microscopic examination revealed that originally the hair was blue, the flesh gilded and the robe lacquered red, with the incised decorative lines filled with gold. When Freer acquired this piece in 1916 from Lai-Yuan and Company, New York, he brought it home thinking it was a work of the Song or earlier'. In 1962, gallery staff analysed the ivory and reported a Carbon-14 dating of `between 1550 and 1750'. The curator in 1969 assigned a date of circa 1750 to the carving. Stylistically related stone and bronze figures from the fifteenth century that are now available for study argue for a much earlier date, which prompted further investigation into Carbon-14 dating. In fact, scientists have recalibrated Carbon-14 test results since the 1960s. According to revised scientific standards, the suggested date for the ivory is between 1440 and 1660, which supports a fifteenth or early sixteenth century date. Some scholars are proposing an even earlier date. A strikingly similar but more fragmentary ivory Buddha in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has been published, on the basis of style, as dating between 1200 and 1350 (see Craig Clunas, `Chinese Carving', London, 1996, p. 12). The shape of the face of the Freer's Buddha and its very slight Tibetan cast strongly suggest a Ming date, after the assimilation of Tibetan features in the early fifteenth century. Occasionally iconography as much as stylistic detail can help date a piece. The ivory carving in Figure 12 is perplexing and intriguing in many regards. The Freer purchased it from S. Kriger, a Washington dealer, in 1957. Until recently it was dated to 1025, based on an inscription carved into the underside of the base, yet almost no figural ivory carvings have been documented from the Song dynasty. Carbon-14 test results on the ivory are useless as a dating tool because the carver used fossil mammoth ivory that dates back 32,000 years. A few other closely related inscribed ivory Buddha figures exist in Western collections, but most scholars today do not accept the Song dates given for those images either. The ornateness and extreme attention to minute decorative details, including independently rotating seeds in the centre of the carved lotus flower, suggest a fairly late date for the Freer's figure. The exaggerated elongation of the body and hands also point to a seventeenth or eighteenth century date. Some of the other ivories bearing Song inscriptions, including one published by Benjamin Rowland in the Asia Society exhibition `The Evolution of the Buddha Image' in 1963, seem earlier than the Freer's carving. The relationship among the existing pieces is difficult to fathom. Perhaps some of the images were carved in the Yuan or early Ming, and the Freer's figure was a later Ming or Qing replacement to the group. The inscriptions might be the work of a modern dealer in China who owned the images and wanted to make them easier to sell by an early attribution. The Freer's figure can probably be linked to the ivory-carving centre of Zhangzhou in Fujian province. Fujian was also home to the Dehua porcelain kilns that produced the closest parallels to this figure. Some of the porcelain images also depict a figure with a raised cranial bump that indicates it is a Buddha; however, the clothing, jewellery and Buddhist prayer beads signify a bodhisattva. The conflict is resolved in a belief popular in Ming and Qing China that Guanyin can assume the form of a Buddha to help sentient beings. The attributes of a dragon and a miniature Buddha held at chest level help confirm that this figure is Guanyin. The images presented in this article were originally displayed in dimly lit temples with offerings before them, partially obscured by clouds of incense. While it is not possible to recreate the original meaning and impact of the sculptures in the dramatically lit space of a hushed museum gallery, they are now displayed in a manner that encourages appreciation of the objects as individual works of art. Although most of the sculptures were created anonymously in workshops and were intended to be viewed as elements in an assemblage, each individual image on display also tells the story of Western scholarship in Chinese Buddhist art. Knowledge of the field has advanced rapidly. Tribute is owed to past scholars who worked with the Freer's sculptures burdened by limited access to comparative material. Acknowledgement and encouragement is also due to contemporary scholars who work to correct our understanding of Buddhist sculpture and devotional objects created in China.