Page 104 - Christie's Inidian and HImalayan Works of Art, March 2019

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE HONOLULU COLLECTION
672
A PAINTING OF VAISHRAVANA
TIBETO-CHINESE, 18TH CENTURY
Image 40æ x 24¿ in. (103.5 x 61.4 cm.)
$40,000-60,000
PROVENANCE
Sotheby’s New York, 23 March 2000, lot 69

The present painting depicts Vaishravana, one of the four Guardian Kings Chinese representations of Buddhist fgures in a landscape. Vaishravana
or Dharma Protectors, identifed by his armored garb and his attributes, the stands on a rocky crag looking out on a sea that extends into the far distance,
bannered staf and jewel-spilling mongoose. Each of the four Guardian Kings with jagged peaks rising from the water, their outlines rendered in hues of blue
are associated with a cardinal direction, and are tasked with protecting the and green in the traditional Chinese manner. The sky is unpainted, utilizing the
Buddhist faith; Vaishravana is associated with the north, and is considered the raw silk, another feature common to Chinese landscape painting, and the deity
chief Guardian King. His iconography is partially descended from the Hindu is fanked by a blossoming peach tree and shoots of bamboo.
wealth deity, Kubera, and in some contexts within Tibetan art, Vaishravana is
also considered to be a god of wealth and prosperity. The present painting, Compare the present work with a painting of Virupaksha, dated to the Qing
however, is more likely to be part of a larger set of paintings depicting dynasty, illustrated by Mei Ninghua and Tao Xincheng in Gems of Beijing
Shakyamuni Buddha, the Sixteen Great Arhats, the two lay attendents Cultural Relic Series – Buddhist Statues II, Beijing, 2003, p. 248, no. 206; in
Dharmatala and Hvashang, and the four Guardian Kings. Such sets were particular, the armor and aureole of fames are rendered similarly in both
common throughout the history of Buddhism in both China and Tibet. paintings. The overall composition of the Beijing painting mirrors the present
example: Virupaksha stands within a traditional Chinese landscape, fanked
While Tibetan painting styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth century by shoots of bamboo and a gnarled pine tree in a manner comparable to the
increasingly incorporated elements of Chinese landscape painting, resulting in present example.
an original multilayered composition, the present work follows more traditional
Himalayan Art Resources (himalayanart.org), item no. 24467.

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