A Tibetan Artist’s Interest in Archaic Chinese and Kashmiri Art

The Tenth Karmapa, Choying Dorje (1604–1674), provides a rare glimpse into the life of a Tibetan artist. Little is known about the lives and works of most artists, but the Karmapa’s importance as the head of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism led to the production of extensive biographical material, giving us a wealth of information about his artistic career, including his early training, collecting interests, documentation of his artistic production, and models he sought for imitation.1 He drew from a wide range of sources. According to Tibetan tradition his paintings were inspired by Chinese models and his sculpture by the Kashmiri tradition. A true connoisseur of the art of the past, the Tenth Karmapa was inspired by archaic models not practiced by other artists for centuries, as if harking back to a better time, a reaction to his own turbulent era. He did not just adopt styles and genres wholesale, but rather experimented with different compositional and figural models as well as styles, even mixing genres to create a personal visual idiom.

The Karmapa’s Life and Authorship

The Tenth Karmapa was something of a child prodigy. By the age of seven he is said to have fully learned the art of painting, and by the age of eight he was already a prolific artist. His most quoted statement reveals his self-conception as an artist: “Regarding poetry and painting there is none greater than me in Tibet. I am one who pleases Avalokiteshvara. I am one who has come into this world to paint.”2

Despite being a great incarnate lama, the Tenth Karmapa lived a challenging life. When the long-standing sectarian strife between the Karmapa’s main patron, the ruler of Tsang in southwestern Tibet, and the Geluk monastic order and their Mongolian patrons boiled over into war, the Dalai Lamas rose to political power. In 1645 the Karmapa fled east to the distant lands of Yunnan on the Sino-Tibetan border, an area protected by the Karma Kagyu’s longtime patrons, the Naxi kings of Lijiang. While the Tenth Karmapa’s long twenty-five-year exile seems to have limited his wider activity as a religious leader, it also provided him with the opportunity to explore his creative affinity as an artist.

In Lijiang survives a set of seven paintings of Buddha Shakyamuni and the Sixteen Arhats dated 1660 (fig. 1), executed and inscribed by the Tenth Karmapa’s own hand. The end of a lengthy gold inscription at the top of the set’s central painting makes his authorship clear (fig. 2):

For the sake of the wishes of the Prince Karma Puntsok Wangchuk who possesses a wealth of faith, the one practiced in the arts called “Lokeshvara,” and who is praised as the tenth to be blessed with the name “Karmapa,” Choying Dorje, painted in their entirety by his own hand.3

The modest, almost self-deprecating phrasing suggests the Tenth Karmapa wrote the inscription himself. Moreover, “Lokeshvara,” meaning “Lord of the World,” is an unusual epithet that the Tenth Karmapa used to refer to himself, which reaffirms his authorship. The name Lokeshvara references the Karmapas’ identity as emanations of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. Both Tibetan and Chinese sources corroborate that the recipient of this set of paintings named in the inscription was the Naxi crown prince of Lijiang, Mu Jing (1628–1671).

The Arhat Genre

Most paintings identified as being in the style of the Tenth Karmapa depict arhats, the original followers of the Buddha, and biographical writings confirm that arhats were the Karmapa’s favorite subject to paint. The arhat genre was imported from China, making it a rich vehicle for Chinese visual modes, which may have made it a convenient medium for the Karmapa to explore his artistic interests.

The paintings in this set feature small groups of arhats participating in social activities and mundane acts such as eating. In Arhats Viewing a Painting of Birds (fig. 1), two arhats are looking at a painting, a scholarly activity. Chinese convention would show the arhats looking at a religious icon such as Avalokiteshvara, but here the arhats view a secular theme of birds.4 The Tenth Karmapa’s love of birds was so well known that people gifted them in great profusion, inundating his court with avian creatures.5 The Karmapa combined secular and religious artistic traditions, here merging the Chinese bird-and-flower painting genre and the arhat genre.

The arhat holding the top of the painting of cranes grasps a brush in his right hand, suggesting he painted these birds. This depiction therefore self-identifies the Karmapa, himself a monastic incarnation and painter of birds, with these arhats. Moreover, the Tibetan-style cap on the young boy attendant is likely a reference to the birth of the Tenth Karmapa’s son, the Sixth Gyeltsab, Norbu Zangpo (1660–1698), that year. While the Karmapa was fully ordained, he lived an unconventional life in exile, taking a consort and having children.6 These elements demonstrate that the paintings in this set are more than simple icons—they are personal paintings, quite unlike the usual Tibetan conventions of this genre.

His Painting Style

As seen in this inscribed set, the Tenth Karmapa’s figural forms are idiosyncratic and spontaneously drawn. They share a whimsical naïveté recognizable by the fleshy abbreviated faces with tiny pursed red lips. These faces do not resemble contemporary Tibetan forms but seem to draw on ancient Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907) models. Following the conquest of China by the Manchus and the establishment of their new alien regime, the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Chinese artists living through the social turmoil used such models to evoke a distant golden age. The Karmapa was likely exposed to these conventions while living in Yunnan.

The Tenth Karmapa was also fascinated with a wide range of animals, especially birds, which he rendered sensitively and even playfully. His brushwork is especially distinctive; he skillfully employed subtle ink washes and often used a “boneless” technique combined with short, quick, controlled lines to evoke shape, a brush technique known in the Chinese tradition as “tremulous brush” (zhanbi) (fig. 3).

The use of silk as a support, or canvas, is another unusual characteristic, as Tibetan painters usually preferred cotton. The Tenth Karmapa’s biographies suggest some of the sources for his new “Chinese-style thangka painting.” Shortly after arriving in Lijiang, for instance, he “examined many thousands of Chinese paintings on silk” in the king’s palace.7 Local tradition also recounts that the ruler invited the master painter Ma Xiaoxian from Ningbo to Lijiang, and the Tenth Karmapa is said to have greatly admired his work. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Karmapa’s compositions most resemble extant twelfth-century paintings from Ningbo, a famous center of artistic activity on the east coast of China.

These stylistic observations enable us to identify other works by the Karmapa’s hand (figs. 4, 5, and 6). However, the Tenth Karmapa’s biographies also record that he set up workshops for the production of images, and he worked collaboratively with other artists throughout his life. Several sets of paintings evidence his distinctive idiom but lack his telltale brushwork, as well as revealing the hands of multiple artists of varying skill. These characteristics indicate workshop production (figs. 7 and 8).8

The Tenth Karmapa was also fond of making painted copies of old famous statues, especially from Greater Kashmir, which he sometimes used to model his painted figures, such as images of the Buddha (fig. 2).9 His own sculptural production featured figural forms largely inspired by the arts of Kashmir (figs. 9 and 10), while the faces of some of his sculptures seem to draw on ancient Chinese models10 (fig. 9). The Karmapa’s sculptures therefore also reflect a synthesis of stylistic sources from different cultures and time periods.

Impact and Later Followers

Some Tibetan scholars have suggested that the Tenth Karmapa’s long exile in Lijiang may have limited the spread of his activity.11 Yet others believe that the Tenth Karmapa’s art forms one of the roots for the painting tradition founded by Situ Panchen (1700–1774) at Pelpung Monastery in Kham region, southeastern Tibet, in the eighteenth century.12 There is even some confusion between the works of the Tenth Karmapa and those of Situ Panchen (1, 2, 3, 4).13 Strong textual and visual evidence shows later followers emulated the Tenth Karmapa’s style into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.14

Looking beyond the individual artist, workshop pieces suggest that teams of artisans were trained in the Tenth Karmapa’s unusual style (figs. 7 and 8). Given the exalted status of the artist as one of the highest incarnate lamas, it is little wonder that his works were also copied. So far, the Tenth Karmapa marks the only instance in the history of Tibetan art where we can trace works from the hand of the master to workshop production and later copies.