A portrait of Thangpa Chenpo, First Abbot of Taklung, Central Tibet, commissioned for Taklung Monastery, circa 1180 - 1210, painted by Thubten Gyatso

Sotheby's New York, 20th September 2005, lot 14.

Carlton Rochell, New York, 2006.

Icons of Devotion, New York, 2004, cat. no. 21.

David Jackson, Mirror of the Buddha: Early Portraits from Tibet, New York, 2011, fig. 5.18.

Jane Casey, Taklung Painting, Chicago, 2023, cat. no. 10.

This important early painting encapsulates the height of quality achieved at Taklung, a Kagyu monastery established in 1180, and depicts the founder of the monastery, Taklung Thangpa Chenpo (1140-1210), also known as Tashipel. The central and surrounding figures are beautifully rendered with a vivid palette. The artist Thubten Gyatso achieves this with a free and expansive hand, and also skilfully renders perspective through the lotus petals that wrap around the seat. The intricate narrative scene below the central figure appears to be the earliest example in all the extant Taklung paintings.

The central figure Taklung Hierarch Thangpa Chenpo, First Abbot of Taklung, is depicted sporting a thin moustache and short goatee and dressed in a patterned outer robe, a red monks habit, and a yellow sleeveless vest, with his throne set against a background of stylized multicolored mountains, two naked ascetics appearing from behind rocks above the lama, each holding an offering to the master, a foliate motif running horizontally beneath the throne with two deities of wealth and good fortune Ganapati and Jambhala at either end, with buildings and meditation huts displayed beneath, a lama at bottom left, probably the patron, seated with hands held together in anjali-mudra, the gesture of salutation and respectful adoration.

As expounded by Jane Casey in Taklung Painting, Chicago, 2023, pp. 197-8, the upper register depicts Vajradhara through Phagmodrupa. The side registers include six manifestations of Tashipel, all within willow huts. This is also seen in the portrait of Tashipel, his footprints and manifestations in the Guimet Museum, Collection Lionel Fournier, illustrated ibid, cat. no. 8. To the left are Maravijaya Buddha, Shadakshari Lokeshvara, to the right Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi, both above two additional human manifestations. The patron of the painting is depicted on the lower left corner, aside a platform with fly-whisks crossed at the base, supporting a stupa and offerings.

An inscription at the center of the bottom register beneath the figure Aparajita translates as ‘Thubten Gyatso painted (this)’.

Casey emphasizes the importance of what is the earliest known narrative scene on all the surviving Tashipel portraits, and how it provides chronological clues. As she outlines, pp. 197-8, the absence of the two-story New Temple (Chokhang Sarma), built by Second Taklung Abbot Kuyalwa in 1224-28, and the absence of the Kumbum, containing memorial stupas of the first three abbots, indicates how early the painting is. Buildings presented in the narrative include the Labrang, with a forward-facing image of a Tibetan monk, likely Tashipel. During his lifetime, this was the community’s assembly hall, which later housed statues of the first three abbots. There is also a covered walkway with wooden pillars and three adjacent willow huts, the central one likely the Jakchil, the willow hut built by Tashipel to be his main residence at the site. The torso of a figure seen through its window may be the master himself. On the far left of the narrative is a grass hut that may be the Shere Lhakhang, which faced east into the courtyard, where Tashipel’s first teaching assemblies were held. The figure inside the hut (also likely Tashipel) is flanked by two seated monks, perhaps a reference to the assembled monks who listened to Tashipel’s teachings.

Comparison of the painting of the central figure is so closely related that it is almost certainly the same hand of Thubten Gyatso that painted another portrait of Tashipel in the Pritzker collection, illustrated ibid, cat, no. 9 and also on Himalayan Art Resources, no. 58362. Both early paintings were created during the tenure of the master.

Sotheby's acknowledges Jane Casey's important work on the iconographic identification and dating of this lot.