TIBET, 18TH-19TH CENTURY

The present painting likely depicts Ajita, the second of the Sixteen Great Arhats, the group of disciples and followers that were canonized as a discrete grouping as early as the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907). Likely part of a larger set of perhaps twenty-three paintings, each depicting a single arhat, the patron Hvashang, the attendant Dharmatala, the four Guardian Kings, and Shakyamuni Buddha, the work is painted in an Eastern Tibetan style, with a high horizon line and tall, triangular snow-capped mountains. Ajita sits on a low cushion holding a jewel-spewing mongoose in his hands; his delicately painted face, with wisps of facial hair and downcast, piercing gaze, is hooded with a red robe and backed with an orange nimbus. Monks and attendant figures sit amidst the landscape below, while a red-hatted Sakya lama sits at top center flanked by two buddha images. The finely delineated peach tree at top left, the water that flows through the composition, and the blue-and-green rockwork are all characteristic of arhat paintings and have their origins in Yongle-period depictions of the Sixteen Arhats.