Page 69 - Christies Indian and Himalayan Art Sept 2015
P. 69
106 PROVENANCE:
A PAINTING OF ARHAT VANAVASIN
EASTERN TIBET, 18TH CENTURY Collection of the Philosophical Research Institute, Pasadena, California
The Shelley and Donald Rubin Collection, acquired in New York, 19
Seated on a rock, his right hand raised in vitarkamudra, the March 1996
gesture of teaching and his left holding a fywhisk, clad in Rubin Museum of Art, gifted from the above in 2006
heavy multicolored robes with a patchwork brocade over
his left shoulder, the face with moustache and close-cropped PUBLISHED:
hair backed by a nimbus, with three attendants to his left, a
waterbank with a boat and sea creatures at the bottom, all set Himalayan Art Resource (himalayanart.org), item no. 238
within a mountainous landscape
Opaque pigments and gold on textile The third arhat, Vanavasin the Elder, is distinguished by the pointing gesture
31Ω x 20º in. (80 x 51.4 cm.) of his right hand and the fywhisk in his left. He is the third of the Sixteen
Great Arhats. The present work would have been part of a twenty-three
$12,000-18,000 composition set depicting the Sixteen Great Arhats, along with Buddha
Shakyamuni, the attendant Dharmatala, the patron Hvashang, and the Four
Directional Guardian Kings.
