Page 89 - Bonhams Indian and Himalayan Art March 2016 New York

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A LARGE THANGKA FROM AN ARHAT SET:
NAGASENA
Qing, circa 1800
Distemper on cloth; with original gold-brocade
silk mount laid on board and framed.
Image: 40 1/2 x 23 3/4 in. (103 x 60.4 cm);
With silks: 61 x 31 3/4 in. (155 x 80.7 cm)
$10,000 - 15,000

清 約1800年 羅漢唐卡組畫之一: 那伽犀那尊者

Accompanying another on the opposite page,
this thangka stems from a set of sixteen or eighteen
depicting arhats. Another two from the same set
were sold at Bonhams, San Francisco, 20 Dec
2011, lot 8426.

Here, Nagasena sits on a fantastical chair straddling
a brook. He holds a ritual staff and the elixir of
immortality in a gold vase. In the knotted peach tree
above him Ushnishavijaya floats and two cheerful
monkeys offer him the peaches they’ve plucked.
A Mongol patron, wearing the characteristic fur hat,
jovially motions to catch them. Meanwhile, on the
other bank, a crane quenches its thirst near a monk
looking up at Nagasena in admiration.

Arhat Nagasena was a prince in Northern India.
He renounced his claim to the throne and entered
the monastic order at the age of fifteen, whereafter
attained the stage of an arhat. He is best known
for the wide-ranging discussion of Buddhist subjects
he had with an Indo-Greek king called Milinda.
The conversation is recorded in the Pali treatise
Milinda Pañha.

The composition is near identical to another
example from a set in the Palace Museum, Beijing
aforementioned on the opposite page (Zangchuan
Fojiao Tangka-Gugong Bowuyuan Cang Wenwu
Zhenpin Quanji, Hong Kong, 2006, p.199, no.184).
This comparable set is dated to the 44th regnal year
of the Qianlong Emporer, 1789.

Referenced
HAR - himalayanart.org/items/61458

Provenance
Collection of William J. Hobbs (1904-1977)
since early 1950s
Thence by descent to the current owner

INDIAN, HIMALAYAN & SOUTHEAST ASIAN ART | 87