A GREY SCHIST FRAGMENTARY RELIEF
NORTHWESTERN INDIA, GANDHARA, 3rd/ 4th CENTURY
£504
Auction: Islamic Art | Lots 1 to 66 | 12 June at 10am
Description
carved in relief with devotees under an arch
Dimensions
33cm (13in) length
Provenance
The collection of Benjamin Everett Gill (1838-1901).
Thence by descent.
Footnote
Note:
For a more complete relief with scenes from the Buddha’s Life on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, see inv. no. 342-1907.
From the collection of Benjamin Everett Gill (1838-1901) from Aberdeen. Benjamin E Gill was a shipwright with Hall, Russell & Company. He built and sailed to Japan in 1869 on the Jho Sho Maru with Thomas Blake Glover who had commissioned the vessel. After they arrived in Nagasaki in January 1870, Thomas B Glover sold the boat to the Kumamoto Domain and that started the Japanese navy. A collection of Asian Art was brought back to Scotland by 1884 when Benjamin E Gill got married. The illustration shown Benjamin E Gill in Nagasaki in the early 1870s.
The collection was passed down by direct descent to the current owner's father and mother, Michael Peter Gill (1934-2015) and Shiona Airlie (1953-2023), and subsequently grew. Michael P Gill was the head of art at George Watson's College, and Shiona Airlie, who had a lifelong love of everything Chinese, its history, culture and language, was the author of Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart (1989) and Scottish Mandarin: The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston (2012). Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, KCMG, CBE was a Scottish diplomat and colonial official who served as the tutor and advisor to Puyi, the last emperor of China.