A Tall Thai Gilt Bronze Buddha Sculpture

Lot Details & Additional Photographs

Rattanakosin period, 18th or 19th century, bronze with traces of gilding, a large crowned and adorned figure depicted in royal attire with a tiered, spire-topped crown terminating in a tall flame finial, flanking flame-form ear ornaments, and an elaborately pierced and chased pleated robe with dense floral brocade decoration, hand raised before the chest in abhaya mudra, raised on a lotus plinth above a stepped base.

21 3/4 x 6 x 5 in.

From the Collection of William Arthur and Ferol Smith, Pennsylvania, and by descent

William Arthur Smith (1918–1989) was an American artist, illustrator, portraitist, and international cultural ambassador whose work was profoundly influenced by his experiences in Asia. He began his professional career in New York in the late 1930s, where he illustrated books, ghostwrote the comic strip Polly and Her Pals, and taught at the Grand Central School of Art. From the 1940s through the mid-1960s, his illustrations appeared frequently in The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Redbook, and he created advertising art for companies including Coca-Cola, Remington, U.S. Steel, John Hancock, and Dow Chemical.

During World War II, Smith served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in China. His years in China had a lasting influence on his artistic interests and his subsequent engagement with Asia. After the war, he and his wife, artist Ferol Stratton, lived in Paris from 1949 to 1951.

Smith's involvement with international art and cultural exchange expanded throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He lectured in Athens, Manila, and Warsaw and served as an official delegate to the International Association of Art in Venice in 1954. In 1958, he traveled to the Soviet Union as a member and official delegate under a cultural exchange agreement. He subsequently traveled extensively throughout Asia on State Department-sponsored cultural exchanges, lecturing and exhibiting his work in countries including the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma (Myanmar), Nepal, India, Japan, and Turkey.

Smith was also a collector of Asian art, reflecting his sustained personal and professional interest in the region. He moved from New York to Pineville, Pennsylvania, in 1956. His work is held in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Michener Art Museum, and Norman Rockwell Museum.

Good estate condition; rubbing with loss to gilt on surface, especially to the reverse side; reverse side over back with old paper stickers; old nails to secure feet to pedestal; pedestal with wear; circle to base is missing; finial on crown is loose in its mount; sculpture is weighted to interior of pedestal.