Provenance:
Lionel and Danielle Fournier Collection
Christie's, Paris, December 12, 2018, no. 35
Published:
Pratapaditya Pal, Tibetan Paintings, Basel, 1984, pl. 49
The finely drawn meditation thangka portrays Grahamatrika, Mother of the Planets, venerated for her power to remove obstacles caused by poorly aligned astronomical events. Indeed the radiant white goddess appears within a celestial sphere surrounded by deep blue space. The Four Guardians of the Directions are positioned in the quadrants outside the circle—Virudhaka and Virupaksha to the left and right above, Dhrtarastra and Vaishravana below—with Shakyamuni Buddha, Vajrapani, Maitreya, and Manjushri in the upper register, and an officiant, a table of offerings, and nine Vedic planetary deities beneath.
The stunning white six-armed figure dominates the picture, dramatically outlined against the intense reds, blues, and greens of her heavenly world. The form of the niches around the borders and the vivid palette are typical of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Newar painting style in Tibet, seen particularly in Sakya-order commissions throughout western and central regions.[1] The bold and distinctive shading that delineates the folds of Grahamatrika’s robes and the contrasting textile colors of the front and back of her scarves is a style introduced to Tibetan painting in the murals along the processional corridor (skor lam) on the ground floor of Shalu monastery.[2] The murals were completed in the first half of the fourteenth century by artists trained at the Yuan court in the style established by the celebrated Nepalese master Aniko (1244-1306) and described in Chinese literature as the ‘western style of Buddhist images,’ referring to the strong Newar influence.[3] The deep folds of cloth created by this method of shading are seen in sets of miniature tsakali initiation paintings or temple consecration sets, generally dated to around 1400.[4] The style continues in Tibetan painting but with less emphasis on the degree of shading to delineate movement of cloth and more on the decorative motifs of the textiles, such as in the murals at Pelkhor Chode, Gyantse, dating to the second quarter of the fifteenth century.[5] The clarity of the composition of the Grahamatrika thangka and the simplicity of the robe design suggests a circa-1400 date for this singular Tibetan work of art.
1 Dr. Pal suggested a possible western Tibetan provenance for this thangka, Pal, op. cit., p. 103
2 Roberto Vitali, Early Temples of Central Tibet, London, 1990, pp. 103-107: compare the shading style on robes and the contrasting colors of the shawls, cloaks, and their linings in a royal scene and a court procession in murals at Shalu, ibid., pls. 53, 55
3 Heather Karmay, Early Sino-Tibetan Art, Warminster, 1975, p. 33, n. 103
4 Susan L. Huntington and John C. Huntington, Leaves from the Bodhi Tree: The Art of Pala India (8th-12th centuries) and Its International Legacy, Dayton, 1990, pp. 346-348, illus. pls. 119a-c; Pratapaditya Pal, Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure, Chicago, 2003, pp. 224-225, cat. no 146; and Steven M. Kossak and Jane Casey Singe, Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet, New York, 1998, pp. 187-190, cat. no. 54
5 Franco Ricca, “Stylistic Features of the Pelkhor Chöde at Gyantse” in Jane Casey Singer and Philip Denwood, Tibetan Art: Towards a Definition of Style, London, 1997, pp. 196-209
