Page 148 - 2019 September 11th Christie's New York Chiense Art Himalayan bronzes and art

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE ASIAN COLLECTION
375
A GILT-BRONZE FIGURE OF ELEVEN-
HEADED AVALOKITESHVARA
INNER MONGOLIA, DOLONNOR STYLE,
LATE 18TH CENTURY
20º in. (51.4 cm.) high

$12,000-18,000

The present work was likely created in or around
the thriving Buddhist center of Dolonnor in Inner
Mongolia. During the Qing period, the Kangxi,
Yongzheng, and Qianlong Emperors patronized
Dolonnor as a center of Buddhist learning and
artistic production. The site was purposefully
built not far from Shangdu (Xanadu), the old
thirteenth-century summer capital of Kublai
Khan. The Mongolian lama, master artist, and
leader of the Khalka Mongols, Zanabazar, formally
assimilated his khanate into the Qing Empire
before the Kangxi Emperor at Dolonnor in 1691.
It continued to be an important bronze image
foundry even into the late nineteenth century, as
noted by the Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky
on one of his expeditions to Mongolia in the
1870s (N. Przhevalsky, Mongolia, London, 1876, p.
105). Compare the drapery and bodily proportions
of the present fgure with another gilt-bronze
fgure of Eleven-Headed Avalokiteshvara in the
collection of the British Museum, illustrated by
W. Zwalf in Heritage of Tibet, London, 1981, p.
43, fg. 17.

Himalayan Art Resources, item no. 24553.

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