CHINA, CHENGDE, XUMI FUSHOU TEMPLE, CIRCA 1780

This large and vividly-painted thangka of Buddha Shakyamuni is carried out in the style associated with the Xumi Fushou Temple in Chengde, outside Beijing. Likely painted in the imperial workshops of the capital for the decoration of the esteemed temple, it belongs to an imperial Chinese school of Tibetan-style Buddhism that flourished in the eighteenth century during a period of cultural interchange between China, Mongolia, and Tibet.
The Xumi Fushou Temple was completed in 1780, under the orders of the Qianlong Emperor. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Qianlong invited Lobsang Palden Yeshe, the Sixth Panchen Lama and the second most important religious leader of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama, to visit him in Chengde outside Beijing. Like his grandfather before him, Qianlong recognized that the arrival of the revered Panchen Lama to Chengde at the behest of the emperor demonstrated enormous political and religious power in the eyes of the Mongol khans, who were all devout Tibetan Buddhists, and who would also be in attendance at his birthday proceedings. As a fantastic gesture of good will, and a display of his power, Qianlong commanded his architects and builders to replicate the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, seat of the Panchen Lama in Tibet, in the summer retreat of Chengde. The resulting Xumi Fushou Temple was completed in time for the celebration and the visit of Lobsang Palden Yeshe, and filled with countless paintings, sculptures, and other ritual objects. Unlike the Putuo Zongchengmiao, the replica of the Potala, which while enormous was largely an empty façade, the Xumi Fushou was a functioning monastery and temple. The Chinese architects, however, could not resist laying out the Xumi Fushou on a processional axis in the Chinese manner and in contrast to the layout of the Tashi Lhunpo, thus obfuscating the aesthetic connection between the two buildings.
The present painting was in all certainty part of a larger set painted in the imperial workshops of Beijing for the decoration of the new Xumi Fushou Temple. The set was subsequently dispersed, and many are now found in museums and private collections. Paintings of Kshitigarbha, the Buddha Ratnasambhava, and the bodhisattva Padmapani, all from the Xumi Fushou Temple, reside in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (Object Numbers B72D67, B83D6, and B60D151 respectively), while The Philadelphia Museum of Art retains a painting of Sitatapatra (Object number 1959-156-4) and a painting of an unidentified bodhisattva (Object number 1959-156-5). The painting of Kshitigarbha in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has an inscription stating that it was destined for the Xumi Fushou temple, and even indicates its location within the building. Compare the present work with a painting of Amitabha, also from the Xumi Fushou Temple, which sold at Christie’s New York, 12 September 2018, lot 316 for $162,500, as well as a painting of Suvarnabhadra Vimala sold at Christie’s New York, 20 March 2019, lot 671, for $100,000.