A thangka depicting Amitabha in Sukhavati Paradise, West Tibet, Guge, Late 15th century

Collection of Jack (1926-2017) and Muriel (1929-2019) Zimmerman, acquired prior to 1973.

Tibet, Kunst des Buddhismus, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1977, cat. no. 54.

Dieux et démons de l’Himâlaya, Grand Palais, Paris, 1977, cat. no. 54.

Art of the Himalayas: Treasures from Nepal and Tibet, Newark Museum, Newark; Portland Art Museum, Portland; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; Helen and Clay Frick Foundation, Pittsburgh; Virginia Museum of Replica Handbags s, Richmond; Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena; and Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, 1992, cat. no. 90.

Horizons of the Sacred: The Tibetan View of Shangri-La, Tibet House, New York, 1998.

Jeanne Auboyer, Tibet, Kunst des Buddhismus, Munich, 1977, cat. no. 54.

Jeanne Auboyer and Gilles Béguin, Dieux et démons de l’Himâlaya, Paris, 1977, cat. no. 154.

Pratapaditya Pal, Art of the Himalayas: Treasures from Nepal and Tibet, New York, 1991, cat. no. 90.

This rare West Tibetan Guge-style painting depicts Amitabha meditating in Sukhavati paradise beneath the foliage of a bodhi tree, holding a begging bowl (patra) and seated in the diamond posture (vajraparyankasana) upon a lotus emerging from the cosmic ocean below. White Avalokiteshvara and blue Mahasthamaprapta stand on either side, surrounded by a host of preaching buddhas, deities, monks, celestial beings and musicians, amidst pavilions, trees bedecked with jewels, and a river flowing with blue waters. Historical donors and religious practitioners appear before a red and white temple building in the lower left corner of the painting.

The West Tibetan origin of the thangka is evident in the narrowed almond-shaped eyes of the principal figures; the ornate trilobate and frilled edges on the lotus petals of the Buddha’s seat; mythical animals (in this case hamsa geese) depicted within tendrils on either side of the lotus stem; and the distinctive West Tibetan style of the crowns worn by the attendant bodhisattvas. Compare the virtually identical and disparate crown styles of the attendant bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani on a mural at the circa 15th century Red Temple at Tholing, illustrated in Collecting Paradise, Rubin Museum of Art and Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, New York and Evanston, 2015, p. 159, figs 3.6 and 3.7; the frilled edges of the lotus petals and the mythical animals within lotus tendrils of a fifteenth century Guge Amitabha Sukhavati thangka, illustrated in Pratapaditya Pal, Art of Tibet: A Catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection, Los Angeles, 1983, pl. 12; and the distinctive red-on-white scrollwork on the upper surface of the lotus pedestal with the throne uprights of a fifteenth century Guge thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara thangka, illustrated in Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, New York, 2000, pl. 129. Unusually, the thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara thangka depicts the lineages of two schools of Tibetan Buddhism, Kagyu and Gelug, ibid., cat. no. 129. This Sukhavati thangka depicts a red hat and a yellow hat hierarch within the red scrollwork aureole around Amitabha. Compare the placement of two lamas in the aureole of a 15th century Guge Akshobhya in Abhirati Paradise, illustrated in Pratapaditya Pal, op. cit., pl. P6.