Figure of Daoist Immortal He Xiangu (1700s): Art, History and Details

Figure of Daoist Immortal He Xiangu (1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

He Xiangu is one of the Eight Immortals in the Daoist pantheon. She was thought to have been a real person who lived in the Tang dynasty, originally named He Qiong. As a teenager, she was instructed in a dream to eat powdered mica to become immune from death and to vow to remain unmarried. She did so and became an enlightened practitioner of Daoism. In this delicate carving, He Xiangu is placidly seated in a gnarled and knotty wooden raft amid green-tinted ivory waves. In front of her rests a bamboo basket filled with objects associated with Daoist immortality, while she holds a branch of lingzhi fungus.

Object facts

• Title: Figure of Daoist Immortal He Xiangu
• Date: 1700s
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
• Type: Wood
• Technique: Boxwood with colored ivory base
• Dimensions: Overall: 13.5 cm (5 5/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Qing Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1976.60

A detail from the museum

Her basket contains plants and herbs used by Daoists for attempting to achieve immortality.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1976.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64, no. 2 (February 1977): 39–78.
• Little, Stephen. Realm of the Immortals: Daoism in the Arts of China: the Cleveland Museum of Art, February 10-April 10, 1988. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1988.
• Watson, William, and Chuimei Ho. The Arts of China After 1620. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.