a rare and highly important imperial painting on silk depicting the lohan chudapanthaka china, mark and period of yongle (1403-1424)

seated in vajraparyankasana on an outcrop of rock spread with a floral patterned red and green covering, his hands in the meditation position, dhyana mudra, wearing flowing white and cream garments and a monk's patchwork robe secured by a ring and ribbon, gouniu, his blue silk shoes resting on a ledge before him, all set in a fabulous blue and green mountain landscape with pines and fruit trees, with a sutra, a gilt tripod censer and stand and a circular cinnabar lacquer box placed on an outcrop of rock to his left, a kind and gently smiling expression playing on the face of the arhat with his shaven head framed by a translucent halo, a blue lion-dog crouching in the foreground and growling at a long-haired and bearded foreigner holding its cub, the attendant dressed in a red silk robe with classic Ming floral design, a patterned white apron with thin blue and gold borders, white trousers decorated with gold flowers, a billowing green scarf and a blue cap bound by a string of jewels, and wearing gold earrings and a jewelled necklace hung from a golden torque

King's Art Collection

Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1994-5

Marsha Weidner, Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850-1850, Lawrence, Kansas, 1994, p. 271, no. 21, illus. pl. 10.

Terese Tse Bartholomew, Thangkas of the Qianlong Period, in Jane Casey Singer & Philip Denwood, eds., Tibetan Art: Towards a Definition of Style, London, 1997, p. 111, pl. 92-3

The painting in exceptionally fine condition overall with very minor losses and creasing throughout. There is minor surface accretion overall, clearly visible in the detail photographs (for example, below the lower character of the mark). Two areas of water staining, one to the far right of the rock supporting scholar's objects, and one in the green and blue rockwork above the attendant foreigner (both visible in catalogue illustration). There is considerable staining on all silk panels of the mount, one stain related to the vertical staining on upper mount at top center of painting but masked by pine needles. The mineral pigments still remarkably vibrant. The painting and mount relined. The two streamers foreshortened and consolidated, with the suspension string replaced.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The work bears the inscription "da Ming Yongle nian shi" (bestowed in the Yongle era of the great Ming) and is one of only two known arhat paintings commissioned by the Yongle emperor. The pair to this Chudapanthaka painting depicts the arhat Vajriputra and is now in the Robert Rosenkranz Collection, see James C. Y. Watt and Denise Patry Leidy, Defining Yongle, Imperial Art in Early Fifteenth-Century China, New York, 2005, p. 92, pl. 37. The pair of paintings, defined by a mastery of restrained elegance and formality, survives from a set of sixteen or possibly eighteen, the remaining paintings now lost or unrecorded. The portrait of Chudapanthaka demonstrates a continuum of classical painting style and subject matter that had long been popular in China. Depictions of arhats, the enlightened Indian disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha, were a popular theme in painting and sculpture from around the ninth to tenth century, but unlike the Buddhist gilt bronzes and textile banners commissioned by the Yongle emperor, which drew inspiration from Nepalese and Tibetan traditions, this painting retains distinct Chinese characteristics. The blue and green rockwork, and pine clinging to a steep mountainside are classic themes that define Chinese painting from the Tang dynasty (618-906) onward and ones that provide the magical setting of this exquisite early Ming work.

The painting retains what is most probably its original mount, with elegantly patterned yellow and blue panels of silk on paper framing the picture in the classic Chinese manner, weighted by rod and rollers. Mounted in this fashion it may be assumed that the painting was commissioned not as a gift to a Tibetan, as was the case with many Yongle Buddhist works of art, but for use at the court of the Yongle emperor himself, hanging in a private chapel perhaps. The Yongle emperor was known to be a keen devotee of Tibetan Buddhism. Early Ming textile banners of Tibetan Buddhist deities were not only drawn in Tibetan style but also mounted in the current Tibetan fashion with strips of boldly patterned silk brocade, often with the traditional symbolic open stitch-work, and always with silk veils. The mount of a Tibetan Buddhist two-dimensional image is an integral part of the symbolism of a thanka, a rainbow door into the spiritual world of the deity. The imperial gifts to the Tibetans of Buddhist images were always created and consecrated to the highest standards of religious procedure, which in the case of a textile or painted banner would have included the appropriate mount for a Tibetan context. Giuseppe Tucci has translated a period Tibetan manuscript dealing with Indian, Himalayan and Chinese sculpture styles where imperial marked gilt bronzes are described in some detail. Reference is made to the importance of their consecration as the emperor's tutelary deities. "Such images are consecrated as tutelary gods of the king (emperor) and require accomplished insertion of dharani and pratistha", see Tucci, 1959, p. 187. These exquisite Yongle gilt bronzes, often gifts to Tibetan hierarchs, have survived in some considerable quantity. There are at least six Yongle mark and period textile banners, some with their original mounts, depicting deities of the Tibetan pantheon, half of which remain to this day in Tibetan monastery collections, see Jeannine Auboyer & Gilles Beguin, Dieux et demons de l'Himalaya, Art du Bouddhisme lamaique, Paris, 1977, p. 251, no. 298; Hong Kong Museum of Art, Heavens' Embroidered Cloths, One Thousand Years of Chinese Textiles, Hong Kong, 1995, pp. 131-3, nos. 25, 26; Michael Henss, The Woven Image: Tibeto-Chinese Textile Thangkas of the Yuan and Early Ming Dynasties, Orientations, Hong Kong, November 1977, pp. 33-5, figs. 9, 10, 11. Yet, apart from the pair of arhat paintings, this Chudapanthaka and the Rosenkranz Vajriputra, there is not one recorded Yongle mark and period painting of a Buddhist deity or personage. Such is the rarity of this masterpiece from the court of the Yongle emperor.

The appearance of an imperial reign mark of any period on a painting is highly exceptional, and a documented imperial painting commission of this early date is of great historical significance. It was the Yongle emperor who introduced the custom of inscribing works of art with reign marks and this practice would seem to have originated with items made for a Buddhist function. The most magnificent Yongle reign marks, which are carefully and prominently inscribed, are those ending in the word shi ('bestowed'), which are found only on Buddhist works of art, particularly on gilt bronzes but also on the small group of textile banners mentioned above and the two arhat paintings, the present Chudapanthaka and the Rosenkranz Vajriputra. Other Yongle reign marks, ending in the word zhi ('made'), which became the standard form of marking works of art after this period, do not seem to have been treated with comparable care. On lacquerware, Yongle marks are somehow carelessly and almost invisibly etched into the underside of vessels. And on porcelains, where Yongle marks are very scarce, only a four-character version was used, omitting the name of the dynasty.