Bronze Dancing Shiva Nataraja

We are of the opinion that this is an early to mid 20th century piece. It has a zinc bronze finish/patina which we would not expect with a much older piece.

We are “erring on the side of caution” with this one!

It is a stunning piece of Indian and Hindu symbolism.

From India, this is an outstanding version of fairly well known subject matter, namely, a bronze of a dancing Shiva inside a flaming ring.

Shiva has a profusely decorated headdress with perforated wings to the rear. One arm and hand holds a bowl, another a conch, another with open palm with diamond shaped eye in her palm.

A coiled cobra drapes her body.

Her leg stands on a prostrated worshipper.

It sits on a rectangular shaped plinth with tasseled edges.

The detail to the piece is excellent.

This piece was ‘probably’ bought at one of the 2 main auction houses (Christie’s or Sotheby’s in NY some time between 1999 and 2008) as it was part of the Dallas Private Collection that we have in our Inventory, with full provenance, on almost all of the pieces that were in that collection.

Unfortunately, we cannot locate the Auction Lot for this bronze, as unlike most of the other items in the Collection, it did not retain it’s auction tag/label.

It seems ‘highly unlikely’ to us, that the original wealthy Indian Collector (whom we acquired the collection from) of these items, purchased a cheap reproduction

Larger and older versions of this, have sold for Millions of Dollars in the past.