Page 112 - Sotheby's NYC September 21 2022 Important Chinese Art

The present sculpture, carved from a tall jade boulder, In 1764, the abbot at Shengyin Temple, Master Mingshui,
capitalizes on the material’s inherent qualities to create a instructed local stone engravers to copy Guanxiu’s paintings
towering stone grotto framing the Luohan Nakula who is and the Emperor’s colophons and seals. The sixteen
seated in solitude with a sutra in hand and a censer burning engraved stone panels were installed on the sixteen sides
nearby. The cavernous setting has been expertly crafted to of the Miaoxiang Pagoda in Hangzhou. Rubbings of the
give the impression of raw naturalism, while simultaneously engravings were made by adherents as acts of piety, allowing
providing the artisan with the requisite surfaces to render the the images and the Emperor’s comments to proliferate
luohan almost completely in the round and provide a frontal further. The rubbings taken from it, as well as stone copies
flat plane to accommodate the descriptive inscription. The of the stele, are also preserved in museums, libraries, and
inscription identifies the figure as Nakula, here called the private collections to this day. The pagoda and its carvings
ninth luohan, and includes the cyclical characters dingchou, have since been moved to the Hangzhou Stele Forest.
corresponding to the year 1757. Usually referenced as the From the outset, the rubbings were widely admired. Knowing
fifth of the standard set of sixteen, the luohan is known the Emperor’s fondness for them, in 1778, the military
as Nalkula in Sanskrit and Jialijia Zhunzhe in Chinese. The governor of Shandong province, Guotai (d. ca. 1782),
inscribed text complements the carving as it describes presented the Qianlong Emperor with a magnificent zitan
Nakula as meditating under a sal tree, holding a rosary, and folding screen set with black lacquer panels inlaid with
attended by a young acolyte. Like all luohan, he is a protector white jade in imitation of the rubbings. The Emperor was so
of Buddhism and its practitioners, particularly during periods impressed by the splendid gift that he had the Yunguanglou
of danger or instability. (Building of Luminous Clouds) of the Imperial Palace
The pictorial boulder follows the Qianlong Emperor’s completely redesigned to accommodate and complement
standards for adaptations of classical paintings carved in it. The illustrious screen remains part of the Qing Court
stone. This image of Nakula can be traced to the portrait Collection at the Palace Museum, Beijing, and was exhibited
series of the sixteen luohan painted by the Tang dynasty in the traveling exhibition The Emperor’s Private Paradise:
painter-poet-monk, Guanxiu (832-912), in 891. In it, the Treasures from the Forbidden City, Peabody Essex Museum,
artist depicted the enlightened disciples with distorted Salem, 2010, cat. no. 49.
bodies, hunched backs, bushy eyebrows, and pronounced A similar celadon jade boulder featuring the third luohan,
foreheads, as they had allegedly appeared to him in a dream. Vanavasa, which generally follows Guanxiu’s design and
He then labeled each portrait with the Sinicized name of the inscribed with the two imperial colophons, and a six-
luohan, in according with the pilgrim Xuanzang’s (596-664) character reign mark, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 27th
translation of the Fahua jin (Annotated Record of Buddhism). April 2003, lot 22. A related white jade boulder depicting the
These bizarre portraits captured the imaginations of sixteenth luohan, Abheda, inscribed with an imperial eulogy
devotees, and the series was preserved in the Shengyin and dated to 1758, from the Crystalite Collection, sold at
Temple near Qiantang (now Hangzhou) until 1861. Christie’s Hong Kong, 30th May 2016, lot 3021. See also
In 1757, the same year that the present carving was made, a closely related but smaller jade boulder of the sixteenth
the Qianlong Emperor visited the Shengyin Temple during his luohan, Abheda, formerly part of the Mount Trust, the Floyd
Southern inspection tour to study the portraits as an act of and Josephine Segel Collection, and gifted by Florence
religious devotion. There is some debate as to whether the and Herbert Irving to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
emperor viewed the original paintings or later copies, but in New York, that later sold in these rooms, 10th September
any case, he recorded that he had seen the masterpieces by 2019, lot 17, and is published in Roger Keverne, ed., Jade,
Guanxiu and was inspired to personally study their contents London, 1995, pl. 41. Another related, smaller example,
and have their images proliferated. As a serious practitioner lacking an inscription, from the William Boyce Thompson
of Buddhism, the emperor noticed that the names on Collection, was sold in these rooms, 23rd September 2020,
each of the portraits did not conform to the Sanskrit, so lot 65. A similar jade boulder depicting the second luohan,
he annotated the paintings with the corrected names and Kanakavasta, accompanied by two imperial colophons and
reordered them according to his own teacher’s interpretation seals from the collection of the Wou Lien-Pai Museum and
of their sequence in the Tongwen yuntong (Unified Rhymes). published in Rose Kerr et al., Chinese Antiquities from the
The Emperor then penned two colophons on each painting, Wou Kiuan Collection, Surrey, 2011, pl. 177, was sold in these
respectively eulogizing and reidentifying the luohan depicted. rooms, 20th March 2021, lot 24. A white jade boulder carving
On the painting of the sixteenth luohan, Abheda, he also of a seated luohan also bearing an inscription, from the De
added a lengthy colophon describing his process of studying An Tang Collection, was sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 13th
and reattributing each image. October 2021, lot 3622.
Subsequently, the Qianlong Emperor commanded the palace
painting master, Ding Guanpeng (act. 1708-ca. 1771) to copy
the paintings and the new inscriptions that he had applied to
them. Ding’s copies are now in the collection of the National
Palace Museum, Taipei, and published Gugong shuhua tulu /
Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Painting in the National Palace
Museum, vol. 13, Taipei, 1994, pp 183-214. Over the decades,
the emperor had the images reproduced in additional media,
including textiles and jades.

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