A copper alloy figure of Buddha, Swat Valley, circa 6th / 7th century

Collection of Peng Kai-dong, alias Nitta Muneichi (1912-2006), acquired in the 1950s and 60s.

The Buddha is seated in vajraparyankasana on a broad petalled lotus pedestal. The style of the lotus is commonly associated with bronzes from the Swat Valley region, as is the particular iconography of this form of the Buddha with right hand lowered in varada mudra, and the left hand, here broken off and lost, raised and holding a fold of the robe, compare the mudras of a seated Swat Valley example in the Beri Aschmann Collection in Helmut Uhlig, On the Path to Enlightenment, Museum Rietberg Zurich, 1995, cat. no. 1: and examples in Ulrich von Schroeder, Indo-Tibetan Bronzes, Hong Kong, 1981, pp. 86-89. The iconography was apparently confined to this province of the greater Gandhara and Kashmir region. A renowned example, smaller and with left hand intact, found its way to the West in antiquity where it was excavated at a Viking settlement in Helgö Island, Sweden, ibid., fig. 7B, and is now preserved in Historiska Museet, Stockholm (accession no. 108115_HST), and was recently included in the exhibition Silk Roads, British Museum, London, 2024, cat. no. 1.

This selection of Buddhist bronze figures emanates from the collection of Nitta Muneichi (1912-2006), who was born in Taipei as Peng Kai-dong, but left Taipei for Japan as an adolescent and later took on a Japanese name. He became a highly successful businessman with a company covering a wide range of different industries. After the Second World War, he opened an antique shop on Ginza in Tokyo and in 1950 he began collecting Buddhist bronzes, which eventually became his main collecting interest. An exhibition of his collection was held at the National Palace Museum, Taipei in 1987 (The Crucible of Compassion and Wisdom). In 2003 he donated 358 Buddhist bronzes from East, Southeast and South Asia to the National Palace Museum, which exhibited them in 2004, including a similar standing Acuoye Avalokiteśhvara (The Casting of Religion. A Special Exhibition of Mr. Peng Kai-dong’s Donation, cat. no. 161). A further donation of forty-eight pieces was made after his death. The superb Dali gilt-bronze seated figure of Avalokiteshvara, Acuoye Guanyin, formerly in the Nitta collection, was sold in our Hong Kong rooms from the collection of Sir Joseph Hotung, 8th October 2022, lot 10 for a record price.