Page 37 - Indian and Himalayan Art, March 15, 2017 Sotheby's NYC

make two gures which so faithfully followed this iconography,
an iconography which, at the time he made them, was already
archaic?

Surely the answer must lie in the circumstances of his long
stay in Lijiang, where he sought refuge after eeing central
Tibet in 1645, after his political patron, the king of Tsang, was
defeated by the forces of the Mongols allied to the Fifth Dalai
Lama.

He stayed in Lijiang under the patronage of the Naxi tusi Mu
Zeng (r. 1598-1624) and his son, Mu Yi (r. 1624-1669). Chöying
Dorje stayed in Lijiang for 25 years, from 1642 to 1673, and
only returned to central Tibet for the last year of his life. During
this period, he cooperated with his devout Buddhist patrons
to establish numerous Karma Kagyu monasteries in the
Lijiang region, and bring many of his Karma Kagyu colleague
and pupils to the area. He continued his proli c output of
paintings as well, and one can surmise that this sculpture
and its fellow in the Palace Museum were made during this
long sojourn so far away from his home in central Tibet. The
willow-branch Avalokiteshvara survived as a type in this area of
Yunnan for several centuries after it disappeared in the more
important centers of Chinese Buddhism, and it may be that
he encountered this form of Avalokiteshvara there. Perhaps
an ancient statue was an important object of devotion in one
or more of the families that sheltered him and absorbed his
teachings. He may have been asked to make a copy for one
or more of those families. We know he made at least two, and
perhaps the one in the Palace Museum, with its silver eyes
reminiscent of some Kashmir sculptures, was one he kept
for his own collection, or that of his faithful attendant Kuntu
Zangpo.

Through the sculptures and paintings Chöying Dorje left
behind we are able to make contact with this genius of Tibetan
art, and gradually his story, and his art, are reemerging from
the past.

Essay by Ian Alsop, independent scholar.

See extended essay and footnotes on Sothebys.com

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