Page 110 - Christie's Inidian and HImalayan Works of Art, March 2019

674
A LARGE CAST AND REPOUSSÉ GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF
GREEN TARA
INNER MONGOLIA, DOLONNOR STYLE, LATE 18TH CENTURY
22√ in. (58.1 cm.) high
$100,000-150,000

PROVENANCE
Elmer Holmes Bobst (1884-1978) Collection, New York, acquired in the 1950s

The present work was likely created in or around the thriving Buddhist center The site was purposefully built not far from Shangdu (Xanadu), the old
of Dolonnor in Inner Mongolia. Aspects such as the heavy folds of the drapery, thirteenth century summer capital of Kublai Khan. The Mongolian lama,
the tall, tightly waisted base, and the curled chignon tied with a foral spray master artist, and leader of the Khalka Mongols, Zanabazar, formally
all point to a Dolonnor attribution. Compare the treatment of the jewelry, assimilated his khanate into the Qing Empire before the Kangxi Emperor at
particularly the beaded ornaments in the hair, as well as drapery and base Dolonnor in 1691. It continued to be an important bronze image foundry even
with a repoussé gilt-bronze fgure of Manjushri in the collection of the Rietberg into the late nineteenth century, as noted by the Russian explorer Nikolay
Museum, Zurich, illustrated by Helmut Uhlig in On the Path to Enlightenment: Przhevalsky on one of his expeditions to Mongolia in the 1870s (N. Przhevalsky,
The Berti Aschmann Foundation of Tibetan Art at the Museum Rietberg Zurich, Mongolia, London, 1876, p. 105).
Zurich, 1995, p. 114, cat. no. 65.
Himalayan Art Resources (himalayanart.org), item no. 24510.
During the Qing period, the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong Emperors
patronized Dolonnor as a center of Buddhist learning and artistic production.

108