The Life and Deeds of Tri Ralpachen
Tibet
18th century
Distemoper on cloth
35¾ by 80¼ IN. (92 by 206 CM.)
Provenance:
Tamashige Collection, Japan
Sotheby’s, New York, March 19, 2014, no. 118
Published:
The World of Mandala—Tamashige Tibet Collection, Okura Museum of Art exhibition catalogue, Tokyo, 2005, pp. 42-43, cat. no. 27
FEATURED ART WORK
This extraordinary thangka is among the largest and most ambitious historical narrative paintings known from Tibet. Rather than depicting a deity alone, it celebrates the life and achievements of King Tri Ralpachen (r. 815–838), one of Tibet’s legendary Three Dharma Kings and a pivotal figure in the establishment of Buddhism across the Tibetan Empire. The painting combines royal portraiture, sacred symbolism, and dozens of narrative episodes into a sweeping visual biography, offering a rare window into how eighteenth-century Tibet remembered its imperial past. Monumental historical thangkas of this scale and complexity are exceptionally uncommon, making the work an important document of both Tibetan history and Tibetan artistic achievement.
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Discover the extraordinary beauty and unique history of paintings made for Hindu kings in India’s Pahari (hill) region between the 1620s and 1830s. Pahari artists worked in radically different styles ranging from lyrical and naturalistic to boldly colored and abstracted. Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms illuminates new scholarship on the collaborative artist communities in which most painters worked. Learn about the political, cultural, and religious contexts of these forty-eight exquisite works, and look closely to enter a world of fine detail that delights and astounds.
Forty paintings are reunited from a widely dispersed pictorial series that presents the story of the Hindu divine hero Rama. The timeless tale, more than 2,000 years old, remains a cultural force across southern Asia. Potent themes of righteousness, vengeance, and loyalty are explored through dramatic episodes in which demons are vanquished, lovers are separated, and monkeys, bears, and a man-eagle save the day. Magic abounds, and emotions fly with warriors’ arrows.
Created with blazing colors for a royal collection around 1700, the “Shangri” Ramayana has been a beloved and enigmatic series among scholars and collectors for the past century. New evidence from previously unpublished paintings reveals many more artistic styles and triple the number of total folios than have been previously recognized. It argues in favor of a collaborative model of production involving artists from across the alpine region of Pahari India, which straddles the present-day state of Himachal Pradesh and that of Jammu and Kashmir.
