Lot 188

Royall Tyler (1884-1953)
Thence by descent

For a comparable example see The Brummer Gallery Records in The Met: Watson Library Digital Collections, P 13070. Whilst the Brummer records describe this comparable bird as Late Achaemenid Period (c.4th century B.C.E.), Arthur Upham Pope suggests a later date in his publication 'Masterpieces of Persian Art', Dryden Press, 1945, New York, p. 53., and he is unable to specify a location of origin writing: "No one knows where this sculpture was executed, nor just when. Perhaps the craftsman was not Iranian but west Asiatic, a last practitioner of the Syrian metal-art which had developed in a Gnostic milieu perpetuating themes ultimately Phoenician. But the bird could also be Persian, from the heroic age of the eigth to tenth centuries which produced the vigorous early lustre-painted pottery."