Page 60 - Christies Indian and Himalayan Art IRVING collection Sept 24 2020 NYC

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EAST COAST COLLECTION

733
A GILT-LAQUERED WOOD FIGURE OF SERCHEN KHADING
DORJE LUMO GYAL
TIBETO-CHINESE, 18TH CENTURY
30Ω in. (77 cm.) high
$40,000-60,000

PROVENANCE:
Spink & Son, Ltd., London, by 1998.
Christie's New York, 20 September 2000, lot 113 (part).
LITERATURE:
Spink & Son, Ltd., Body, Speech, and Mind, London, 1998,
p. 36, cat. no. 19 (part).
Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 34071.

This striking gilt-lacquered wood figure depicts the indigenous Tibetan Within the Gelugpa sect, the Tanma Chunyi became retinue figures to the
mountain goddess, Serchen Khading Dorje Lumo Gyal, one of the twelve goddess, Shri Devi Magzor Gyalmo. Worship of Shri Devi Magzor Gyalmo,
deities that make up the group known as the Tanma Chunyi. The Tanma with the Tanma Chunyi as her retinue figures, became popularized by the Fifth
Chunyi are considered deified female personifications of mountains, and were Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617-1682). In his attempt to unify
worshipped in Tibet prior to the introduction of Buddhism. The legendary Tibet, the Great Fifth cleverly sensed the wide appeal of the Tanma Chunyi,
eighth-century Buddhist master, Padmasambhava, was said to have subdued given the local population’s strong ties to the indigenous mountain deities. The
the Tanma Chunyi, and in doing so, incorporated the group into the Buddhist Gelugpa success in achieving supremacy in Tibet in the seventeenth century
canon. In reality, the goddesses were likely assimilated into Buddhism to resulted in close ties to the imperial Qing court in China, and hundreds of
strengthen the local Tibetan population’s ties to the new religion. As such, the Gelugpa temples were built in Beijing and its environs.
Tanma Chunyi are some of the oldest deities in the Tibetan Buddhist canon, The present figure is carried out in a distinct style that emerged from the
and can be found across the four main sects of Tibetan Buddhism. Qing patronization of Tibetan Buddhism, which has been referred to as
Tibeto-Chinese or Lamaist. The application of lacquer over a wood structure
was more common to China than to Tibet, and the reddish-gilding and facial
features, with triangular nose and semi-circular brows are characteristic of
the eighteenth-century Buddhist art of lamaist Beijing. The present figure
was almost certainly part of a larger sect, perhaps of nineteen or twenty-
four total figures, that were commissioned for a Tibetan Buddhist temple in
China. Another figure from the same set was sold at Christie’s New York, 16
September 2014, lot 270 (illustrated at left); two more figures, likely from the
same set as the present figure, are in the collection of the Musée Guimet in
Paris, illustrated by G. Beguin in Terreur et Magie: Dieux farouches du Musée
Guimet, Brussels, 1989, pp. 27 and 29, nos. 4 and 5. A fifth example, also likely
to be from the same set, is in a private collection and illustrated on Himalayan
Art Resources (himalayanart.org), item no. 36240.

A gilt lacquered wood figure of Kong Tsen Demo Dorje Bod Kham Kyong;
Tibeto-Chinese, circa 18th century; 29¾ in. (75.2 cm.) high; sold at Christie’s
New York, 16 September 2014, lot 270, sold for US $75,000.

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