Earthenware horse standing foursquare on a rectangular base, with head slightly turned to the left, and mouth open to show the teeth. The head of the horse is crisply modelled with flared nostrils, large eyes and pricked ears, its powerful body well defined. The animal is covered with an irregularly splashed amber glaze, with a blaze of cream on the forehead. There is a groove running along its neck for the insertion of a horsehair mane and an aperture for a tail.
Provenance:
Joan Irvine Smith, California.
Exhibited:
London, 2018, Marchant.
Published:
Marchant, Exhibition of Chinese Ceramics Han to Song, London, 2018, number 9.
Similar examples:
Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Power and Virtue, The Horse in Chinese Art, New York, 1997, number 10, for a similar horse from the Schloss collection.
Robert L. Thorp and Virginia Bower, Spirit and Ritual, The Morse Collection of Ancient Chinese Art, New York, 1982, number 39.
This powerful figure of a horse is an indication of the high value placed on horses during the Tang dynasty. Its body is strongly modelled, with its legs firmly positioned foursquare. The chestnut coat is conveyed by the rich amber glaze, applied in apparently random splashes, to reveal the cream tone beneath perhaps suggesting that it is a skewbald, such as a chestnut pinto.
Magnificent horses such as this model were prized in Tang China as an important part of Tang military might, a key tool in the protection of its borders: ‘Horses are the military preparedness of the state; if Heaven takes this preparedness away, the state will totter to a fall.’1 At the beginning of the dynasty in the early seventh century, only five thousand horses were recorded in the kingdom, mostly located on the grasslands of Gansu; by the middle of the same century, there were 706,000 horses, divided between eight pasture lands north of the capital.2 Related to the military and governmental use of horses was the role they played in diplomacy, in exchanges of tributes and diplomatic gifts with the nations on China’s borders.
The most desirable horses were from Dayuan (modern Ferghana) to the west of China which had been sought after since the Han dynasty. These acquired illustrious epithets such as ‘blood-sweating horses’ and ‘heavenly horses’ and were valued above the native breed of horse (equus przewalskii) which was shorter and stockier. In reality horses were imported into Tang China from various sources: from breeders in Samarkand, tributes offered from the north-eastern regions and the Uighur Turks, who were a primary source.
Apart from their governmental and military use, horses were employed in elite past-times such as hunting and polo, a sport which had come to Tang China from Iran. Accordingly, there were sumptuary laws governing the ownership of horses, limiting their use to personages of a particular rank. The inclusion of a large earthenware horse such as the present example in a tomb was an important indicator of status and rank.
1 Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963, page 58, extract from The Book of Tang.
2 Schafer, ibid., page 58.