Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Jalisco, Ameca style, Protoclassic period, ca. 100 BCE to 250 CE. A hand-built pottery statue of a woman sitting with both legs folded beneath her thighs. The white-slipped figure wears a simple skirt around her waist while holding a bowl in her lap, and her nude torso displays large breasts and a delineated clavicle. One arm is held to her head and the other extended out in front of her body, perhaps as a defensive gesture, and she dons red-painted earrings and a similarly hued necklace. Her expressive countenance features cupped ears, a dramatically pointed nose adorned with a ring, bulging eyes, and a pinched jawline, all beneath a simple hat. Size: 7.6" W x 11.3" H (19.3 cm x 28.7 cm).
For a stylistically similar example without a bowl in the lap, please see: Kan, Michael, Clement Meighan, and H.B. Nicholson. "Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico: Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima | A Catalogue of the Proctor Stafford Collection at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art." Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, 1989, p. 112, fig. 74.
Provenance: ex-Howard Rose Gallery, New York, New York, USA; ex-private Nevada, USA collection; ex-Dr. David Harner collection, Arkansas, USA, acquired in the 1950s to 1960s, collection #M83
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#149978
Condition
Repairs to legs and bowl, with resurfacing and overpainting along break lines, but very well done and nearly invisible. Fading and chipping to areas of white and red pigment, with nicks to bowl, limbs, and head, and light encrustations within recessed areas. Nice craquelure to original pigment throughout.