Guanyin
Pinturas originales de Guanyin de Xiang Li, maestra artista del Museo del Palacio durante 37 años — el bodhisatva de la compasión en pigmento mineral y en tinta, en hojas de álbum japonés y en seda. Premontadas, firmadas, disponibles para comprar.
Guanyin hears the cries of the world. She is the figure Xiang Li is asked for more than any other, and the one she returns to when she paints for herself — twenty-seven paintings here, some in ground mineral color, some in pine-soot ink alone.
- Original paintings
- 27
- Still available
- 24
- Sizes
- 3
- Years at the Palace Museum
- 37
Guanyin of Compassionate Offering
The one who hears
Guanyin 觀音 is the bodhisattva of compassion. The name is a contraction of Guanshiyin 觀世音 — the one who perceives the sounds of the world — and it reads less like a title than a job description: she is the figure who hears you when you call.
English tends to reach for “the Chinese Buddha”, or “the Goddess of Mercy”. Neither is quite right. A bodhisattva is someone who has earned release from the world and stays in it anyway, because there is still somebody here who needs help. That decision — to stay — is the whole of the subject, and it is what these paintings are about. Not a deity above the weather. A figure sitting on a wet rock with her sleeve in the water.
She is most often painted in white — 白衣觀音, the White-Robed Guanyin — beside the sea, on the island of Mount Putuo off the Zhejiang coast where she is traditionally said to live. That shoreline is underneath most of the paintings on this page: the rock, the moving water, the willow, the far hills.
What she is holding
The same few objects appear across the collection. They are not decoration — each one is doing something.
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The vase and the willow
A small vase of sweet dew and a willow sprig to sprinkle it with. The gesture is medical before it is devotional: willow was the branch you reached for when someone was ill.
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The lotus
It roots in mud and opens clean, which is the entire argument in one plant — a mind that has been all the way through the world without being spoiled by it. She sits on one, stands on one, or holds one out.
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The white robe
The robe is the largest area of most of these paintings and carries almost no color at all. Everything the picture has to do therefore happens at its edges: the fold, the ribbon, the line where the fabric turns.
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The child
Guanyin holding an infant is 送子觀音, the one who brings children — and the reason European visitors from the sixteenth century onward kept mistaking her for the Madonna.
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The two characters
Her name, brushed by the artist into a corner of nearly every painting here, with the cinnabar seal 李湘 beneath it. It is how you can tell one of these across a room.
Heavenly Waters Guanyin of the Flowing Robe
工筆
How one is made
Xiang Li spent thirty-seven years inside the Forbidden City reproducing and restoring the imperial collection — work in which a painting is not finished until it can be set beside the thing it was copied from. She paints Guanyin the same way.
The line comes first: gongbi 工筆, the fine-brush outline that fixes every fold of the robe before a color is mixed. Then the color, in mineral and gemstone pigments ground by hand and cut with Japanese and American watercolor, built up in five or six transparent layers. On silk she works from the back as well, so the pigment settles inside the weave rather than on top of it. A painting takes months.
Nearly all of these are painted on Japanese album leaves — 日本册页 — a watercolor paper board that arrives already mounted. That is why they need a frame and nothing else, and why the surface lies flat instead of behaving like a scroll. The three largest are the exception: two of those are on silk.
Not all of them are color. Several here are pine-soot ink alone — the same subject, the same line, with everything that might distract from it taken away.
- Color
- Ground mineral and gemstone pigment
- Drawing
- Gongbi 工筆 — fine-brush outline
- Support
- Japanese album leaf 日本册页 — the largest on silk
- Build
- Five to six transparent layers
- Finish
- Pre-mounted, ready to frame
- Marks
- Signed, and sealed 李湘 in cinnabar
24 × 36 in
The signature Guanyin
3 paintings
The three largest paintings in the collection, and the ones that go out when a show asks for her best. Two are on silk; the third is on Japanese watercolor paper.
Guanyin of Compassionate Offering · 24 × 36 in · On silk
Heavenly Waters Guanyin of the Flowing Robe · 24 × 36 in · On watercolor paper
Lotus Serenity Guanyin in Bloom · 24 × 36 in · On silk
20 × 24 in
The large Guanyin
13 paintings
The fullest statements of the subject, and the group collectors have bought from most — three of these went together to one man in Massachusetts, who bought them for his three daughters.
Bright Sun · 20 × 24 in
The Water Guanyin · 20 × 24 in
The Ink Guanyin · 20 × 24 in
Ink alone — no mineral color anywhere in it.
The Lotus Guanyin · 20 × 24 in
Guanyin and Child · 20 × 24 in
送子觀音 — the form that brings children.
Love Lotus · 20 × 24 in
Guanyin and Nature · 20 × 24 in
Untitled · 20 × 24 in
Guanyin and Flowers · 20 × 24 in
Untitled · 20 × 24 in
Sold
Untitled · 20 × 24 in
Collection of a family in Massachusetts
Sold
Untitled · 20 × 24 in
Collection of a family in Massachusetts
Sold
Untitled · 20 × 24 in
Collection of a family in Massachusetts
18 × 21 in
The smaller Guanyin
11 paintings
The same subject worked smaller, and in several of them worked in ink alone.
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
Untitled · 18 × 21 in
These are the paintings, not prints of them
Every work on this page is unique and already mounted, so it needs a frame and nothing else. Price depends on size and is quoted on request.
Write to the studio and we will tell you what is still available, send full-resolution photographs of anything you want to look at properly, and arrange shipping or a viewing.
or write to xiangliart@gmail.com
Questions
Are these original paintings or prints?
Originals. Each one is a single painting by Xiang Li, signed and sealed, and there is no second copy of it. Printed versions of some designs — canvases, scarves, journals — are in the shop; the paintings on this page are the paintings.
How much is one?
Price depends on size, and is quoted on request rather than listed. Write to the studio with the painting you are interested in and we will come back to you with the price and its availability.
What does the writing in the corner say?
觀音 — Guanyin — brushed in by the artist, with her seal 李湘 stamped in cinnabar beneath or beside it. Several also carry a line naming where she painted it.
What are they painted on?
Nearly all of them on Japanese album leaves — 日本册页 — a watercolor paper board that comes already mounted, which is why they are ready to frame rather than ready to mount. The three largest, at 24 × 36 inches, are the exception: two of those are painted on silk.
Why are some of them only ink?
Because the subject survives it. Ink painting removes color as a way of holding attention, so what is left has to work on line and tone alone — and Guanyin, who is mostly a white robe and a face, is a subject that can take that.
Can I see one in person?
Often, yes. Xiang Li's originals travel to library, hospital and gallery exhibitions through the year, and Guanyin paintings usually go with them. The exhibitions page lists what is on and what is coming.
Live with a Guanyin
Canvas prints, scarves, puzzles and more — from $14.
Two full-color hardcovers — 217 empresses, 413 painted characters.
Questions? Write to xiangliart@gmail.com