Nahan (Chinese, Luohan) Standing in a Landscape Viewing an Ink-Painted Scroll Depicting a Seated Bodhisattva While Assisted by an Elderly Male Attendant
18th-early 19th century
Description
This painting is mounted and framed as a discrete album leaf. Done in ink and colors on paper, the painting, which might originally have been mounted as a hanging scroll, presumably came from a larger set of multiples, each representing an arhat (Korean: nahan; Chinese: luohan) -- saintly, enlightened beings who protect the Buddhist faith. This painting depicts an arhat clad in a pink monk’s robe, embellished with a red sash and a green cape, standing at the left edge of the composition beside a tall blue-and-green rock and beneath an old, gnarled tree branch with red and green foliage. A halo encircles the arhat's head. Dressed in a russet robe and wearing a black hat with long ribbons trailing at the back, an attendant stands at the right edge of the composition. The attendant holds the upper edge of a hanging scroll, which the arhat is unrolling. The scroll, which represents an ink painting and which is mounted in red and black, represents a bodhisattva seated on a rock. A green rock occupies the lower left corner of the composition; the even-toned green ground that traverses the foreground fades away in the middle and backgrounds to suggest distant space.
Dimensions
painting proper: H. 49.8 x W. 46 cm (19 5/8 x 18 1/8 in.) frame: H. 71.8 x W. 61 cm (28 1/4 x 24 in.)
Provenance
John M. Lyden, New York, (1965-1987). [Kang Collection, New York (by 1995)], sold; Ralph C Marcove, New York (1995-2001), inherited; by Christina J. Marcove, New York (2001-2015), gift; to the Harvard Art Museums.
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