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Expert’s note:
This painting demonstrates the remarkable ability of Tibetan artists to translate complex literary narratives into visual form. The composition combines sacred portraiture, landscape painting, architectural representation, and sequential storytelling within a single integrated image. Palaces, monasteries, gardens, forests, and mountain retreats create an idealized Buddhist world in which every setting becomes a stage for the manifestation of virtue. As a whole, the painting functions as both a devotional image of Shakyamuni Buddha and a visual anthology of exemplary deeds. Through the stories of Sudhana, Ekasrnga, and Kumarakaviputra, the thangka presents a meditation on generosity, renunciation, wisdom, learning, and moral perseverance, the qualities that lead beings along the bodhisattva path toward enlightenment.
Distemper and gold on cloth. Finely painted, depicting Buddha Shakyamuni seated in dhyanasana upon a multicolored lotus throne, his right hand raised in vitarkamudra and the left resting in the lap in dhyana mudra. He is clad in patchwork monastic robes delicately highlighted with gold floral motifs and framed by a radiating aureole.
The central figure is surrounded by an extensive narrative landscape populated with monks, teachers, attendants, and lay devotees engaged in scenes of teaching, worship, travel, and retreat. These vignettes unfold among verdant mountains, winding rivers, billowing clouds, and richly painted monastic pavilions, creating a densely layered sacred topography, filled with extensive gilt inscriptions. The composition is executed in a vibrant palette of red, green, blue, and gold, with finely articulated architecture and minute figural detail throughout.
Provenance: From a private collection in France.
Condition: Good condition with expected wear, minor soiling, light creasing, some flaking and small losses to pigments with associated touchups.
Dimensions: Image size 87 x 56.5 cm, Size incl. mounting 142 x 87 cm
Mounted on a fine silk brocade frame decorated with dragons amid clouds, dating from the same period.
The present thangka depicts three consecutive Avadana narratives:
64: Sudhana-Manohara Avadana (nor bzang gi rtogs brjod): Prince Sudhana falls in love with Manohara, a celestial kinnari. After she is forced to flee the human realm, Sudhana undertakes a perilous journey to find her, ultimately winning her family’s approval and reuniting with her. The story celebrates devotion, perseverance, and fidelity.
65: Ekas?nga Avadana, The One-Horned Sage, (rwa gcig pa’i rtogs brjod): The one-horned sage Ekasrnga grows up in complete isolation and possesses extraordinary ascetic power. A woman is sent to seduce him and draw him into society, illustrating the vulnerability of even profound spiritual discipline to sensual desire.
66: Kumarakaviputra Avadana, The Noble Deeds of the Youthful Poet (snyan ngags mkhan gyi rtogs brjod): This narrative concerns a gifted young poet whose pride in his learning and eloquence is transformed through an encounter with Buddhist wisdom. He ultimately recognizes the superiority of the Dharma over worldly reputation and literary accomplishment.
The pictorial field unfolds as a continuous narrative landscape populated by monasteries, palaces, hermitages, mountains, rivers, celestial beings, monks, nobles, and ascetics. Rather than separating individual episodes into rigid compartments, the artist employs the sophisticated Tibetan narrative convention of continuous storytelling, allowing multiple moments from each avadana to coexist within a unified sacred geography. The viewer is invited to read the painting sequentially, moving through interconnected episodes that illustrate the gradual unfolding of karmic causes and spiritual consequences.
The Avadana Kalpalata is a collection of 108 stories based on Leaves of Heaven Tree, a text composed by Kshemendra, a Kashmiri poet who lived in the 11th century. He, in turn, based his text on the Pali canon of Buddhist scripture. The avadanas are moralistic stories which illustrate how Buddhist teachings can lead to enlightenment. Many avadanas are similar to Jataka tales, in that they are based on the previous lives of Buddha Shakyamuni, in which he lived as a Bodhisattva in various forms, demonstrating the virtues necessary to attain enlightenment.
Literature comparison:
Compare a closely related group of eight thangkas from an Avadanakalpalata set painted in the Lhasa court style, 87.7 x 56 cm, dated 18th century, at Bonhams New York, 14 March 2016, lot 59, sold for USD 245,000 or approx. EUR 298,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing), where the authors note that “they derive from the same woodblock prints and are near identical to two complete sets, one held in the Palace Museum Beijing (Zangchuan Fojiao Tangka-Gugong Bowuyuan Cang Wenwu Zhenpin Quanji, Hong Kong, 2006, pp. 64-95, nos. 56-86), and the other published in Giuseppe Tucci's founding work, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, Rome, 1949, pl. 102-29.”
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s New York, 21 March 2018, lot 310
Price: USD 47,500 or approx. EUR 56,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A large and very fine thangka depicting Shakyamuni Buddha and two classic Buddhist teaching stories, Avadana
Expert remark: Compare the closely related subject, manner of painting, and composition. Note the size (101.9 x 59.6 cm).
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Bonhams Hong Kong, 2 October 2018, lot 91
Mid-Estimate: HKD 400,000 or approx. EUR 52,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: A thangka depicting scenes from the Avadanakalpalata, Tibet, 18th century
Expert remark: Compare the closely related subject, manner of painting, and composition. Note the larger size (147 x 80 cm).
Auction result comparison:
Type: Closely related
Auction: Christie’s New York, 25 March 2004, lot 87
Price: USD 31,070 or approx. EUR 48,500 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing
Description: An Avadana Thangka, Eastern Tibet, 17th century
Expert remark: Compare the closely related subject, manner of painting, and composition. Note the size (91.4 x 65.5 cm).
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