A PARCEL-GILT BRONZE FIGURE DEPICTING KHASARPANA LOKESHVARATibeto-Chinese, Qianlong period (1735-1796)

Himalayan Art Resources item no. 13086.

Berwald Oriental Art, London, 2003. 

Good overall condition. Wear to cold gold and polychrome throughout. Scattered areas of original casting patching at reverse. Baseplate not in tact.
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This rare Qianlong period bronze maintains a long tradition in China of representing Avalokiteshvara seated in the posture of royal ease, rajalilasana, and is often identified as Water-Moon Guanyin residing on Mount Potalaka. However the stylistic conventions in this case are Indo-Tibetan rather than Chinese.

Such parcel-gilt bronzes were popular with the Qianlong emperor who commissioned quantities of statues in this elegant style representing the Tibetan pantheon devised by the imperial preceptor Rolpai Dorje (1717-1786), see Walter Eugene Clark, Two Lamaistic Pantheons, Cambridge, 1937. Both the emperor and Rolpai Dorje were fascinated with the ancient bronzes from India, Kashmir and Nepal that had accumulated in the court and Chinese monastery collections.

The style of this Avalokiteshvara reflects Pala period eastern Indian sculptural traditions. In marked contrast to the highly burnished fire gilt bronzes that exemplify Qing period Buddhist sculpture, the Avalokiteshvara is un-gilt, like the majority of Pala bronzes, but with gold applied to the body as seen in numerous Pala and Nepalese works in the Qing Palace collection, see The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum: Buddhist Statues of Tibet, Hong Kong, 2003, pls. 5, 19, 34, 43-4, 52, 74.

The single leaf crown tied to the knotted hair is a feature often seen on Pala sculpture. A Qing period fire-gilt bronze in the E. M. Scratton Collection, depicting this same rajalilasana iconography, highlights the difference of appearance between the parcel-gilt bronzes and the more common gilded works of the period, see Giuseppe Tucci, Tibet: Land of Snows, New York, 1967, p. 18, pl. 2.