4.b. gTsang-bris
One of the recent styles that should
not be too difficult to document is that
of gTsang, successors to the New sMan-ris
of Chos-dbyings-rgya-mtsho especially
at Tashilhunpo. Two great painters of
this school have published painting manuals,
including color illustrations.29 Some
typical earlier examples have also been
published from Ladakhi collections.30 (Most
dGe-lugs-pa monks from Ladakh who received
a higher scholastic training did so at
Tashilhunpo, their mother monastery, and
this gave rise to other cultural links.)
The painter Phuntsok Sangpo (Phun-tshogs-bzang-po), one of the outstanding
gTsang-bris proponents of the last generation, enumerated three styles--dBus-bris,
gTsang-bris and Khams-bris--stressing the need for each style to retain
its distinct identity.31 His recently published painting manual makes clear
the richness and complexity of the gTsang-bris tradition, within which
three distinct traditions could be discerned:
1. The tradition of Bro-khyung.32 This tradition possessed slightly more
rocky crags and streams, but relatively fewer clouds and flowers.
2. The tradition of Rigs-bzang-lags, the master painter of sKyid-bde-shar.
This was basically a gTsang-style, to which certain excellent elements
from Chinese painting (rgya bris) had been added.
3. The tradition of Phuntsok Sangpo's teacher, bSod-nams-stobs-rgyas,
in which crags, streams, clouds and flowers were widely depicted. The
colors were applied intensely, and the bodily proportions were authentic.33
Phuntsok Sangpo studied thirteen years under bSod-nams-stobs-rgyas, youngest
son of the famous gTsang-bris painting master dBu-chen 'Jigs-med-lags.
'Jigs-med-lags also had two older sons (Phun-tshogs-dbang-rgyal and sPen-pa-rgyal-po),
and he participated in the painting of murals during the renovation of
the Jo-khang in Lhasa in the time of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. 'Jigs-med-lags's
teacher was the renowned painter Blo-bzang-dpal-'byor, a monk painter
of Tashilhunpo who was the disciple of dBu-chen Grags-pa-chos-'phel. Grags-pa-chos-'phel,
in turn, painted thangkas for a previous incarnation of the Pan-chen Rinpoche
[in ca. the mid to late nineteenth century].34
Phuntsok Sangpo participated in 1945 in the renovation of the Sa-skya
Lha-khang-chen-mo, for which about eighty painters were summoned from
other parts of gTsang, including sTod [Shel-dkar, etc., in western gTsang],
Lha-rtse,35 Bo-dong and rTse-gdong.36 The rTse-gdong Lha-bris dBu-chen dBang-'dud-lags,
chief overseer of painting in the project, remarked at the time the purity
and authenticity of Phuntsok Sangpo's gTsang-bris style.37
gTsang-bris painters had a fondness for asymmetrical compositions. Their
landscapes commonly included snow-capped peaks on one side (which were
rarely painting in the dBus-bris), and they had a special way of shading
clouds in the sky and clinging to the tops of hillsides (cat. nos. 14
and 131). Note also the use of pink clouds in both.38
4.c. Khams-bris
In recent centuries no single style enjoyed a monopoly over the whole
of Khams. Instead, several styles coexisted, of which two were more typically
Khams-pa or "eastern": 1. the sGar-bris (3.b, above) and 2.
the Khams-bris, a sMan/sGar hybrid (1.b.ii, above). In both of these,
a stronger Chinese influence via the sGar-bris is obvious in comparison
with the central-Tibetan sMan-ris styles, old or new. In addition, some
painters in Khams worked in varieties of a third tradition: 3. sMan-ris
styles that remained closer to those of dBus province.
Sometimes the three styles coexisted not only in the same Khams district
but even in the same painter. The painter Blo-bzang-'jam-dbyangs (b. 1929)
from Re-sgang village of Cha-phreng district in southeast Khams, for example,
stated that in his homeland three painting styles were followed:39
1. sMan-ris (close to that of dBus in central Tibet)
2. Khams-bris (the hybrid Khams style)
3. Karma-sgar-bris
He claimed he could paint in all three.
Similarly, Namgyal G. Ronge in his article on art and style in Tibet published
in 1982 enumerated those same three painting styles, listing also their
main seats in exile at that time:40
1. dBus-bris [=sMan-rnying], followed in Dharamsala (seat of the Dalai
Lama and his exile government)
2. Karma-sgar-bris, followed at Rumtek, Sikkim (seat in exile of the Karma-pa)
3. sMan-gsar or Khams-bris, followed at Tashijong (seat in exile of the
Khams-sprul).
Ronge, son of the outstanding painter Rang-dge bsTan-'dzin-yongs-'du
from Lha-thog Khams-pa-sgar in Khams (original seat of the Khams-sprul),
differentiated between several Khams styles, identifying a few paintings
as "sMan-ris of Khams,"41 though erroneously asserting (p. 341)
that one painting from the sGar-bris tradition of dPal-spungs and Si-tu
was a mixture of sGar-bris and sMan-bris. He also asserted that the New
Menri led to the Lhasa court style, though it is not clear on what authority
he said so.
The painting of Guru Rinpoche's Copper-Mountain Paradise, no. 192 (Ru
111), p. 474f., is attributed (p. 476) to nineteenth-century successors
to Zhu-chen's sMan-ris school in Derge. But sMan-ris schools do not allow
a painter to shade with indigo the outer edges of clouds or to leave a
horizon unpainted in this way. This is clearly a later Khams Karma sGar-bris,
though with a landscape darker green than normal.
It should be noted that the painting illustrating an episode of Zhu-chen's
life presented in my book of 1996 does not represent a sMan-ris style.42
Indeed, Zhu-chen's own main collaborators Lha-dga' and his brother were
from Karma Lha-steng and would be expected to have followed a Kar-shod-pa
style, i.e. a Karma sGar-bris style preserved near Karma monastery.
The depiction of the Buddha's birth at Lumbini, no. 11 (Ru 572), p. 155f.,
is correctly identified as following an original printed from Derge. But
these blockprints were used as models all over Tibet, and one has to differentiate
clearly the block-print from a painting based on it. Therefore it is not
sure the painting is from "Eastern Tibet, Kham, Derge"; indeed,
the coloring speaks against this. Solid dark blue is not known to have
been used in Derge for skies. Is this a provincial sMan-ris of Khams?
Other attributions to "Derge" are based on this one piece,
all with solid ultramarine skies: no.
126 (Ru 38), no. 127 (Ru 56), and no.
180 (Ru 210). See also no. 6 (Ru 414),
p. 146, "touches of ultramarine could
indicate link with Derge schools,"
though this is surely Karma sGar-bris
of Khams. On p. 494, glossary under "Derge
school," a tradition by that name
was asserted to have been an important
school of painting that flourished in
Derge in recent centuries (cf. also p.
71, col. 1). Such a "Derge school"
is unknown to Tibetan authorities. Since
the nineteenth century, at least two styles
flourished in the Derge kingdom: the Khams-bris
(of Phur-bu-tshe-ring) and the sGar-bris
(of nearby dPal-spungs). I cannot classify
these provincial-looking paintings, though
they are certainly not in the high styles
patronized by the Derge kings and lamas.
Why is "White Vajradhara Father-Mother," no. 167 (Ru 382),
p. 424f., said to be "Eastern Tibetan (?)"? The dark blue sky
makes one immediately suspect a gTsang sMan-ris. The same may apply to
the paintings of Mila Repa's life, nos. 100 and 101 (Ru 180, 183), p.
312ff. In any case, they are definitely not in the Karma sGar-bris of
Khams: the skies are too dark.
The authors refer to "The Fourth Shamarpa," no. 110 (Ru 2),
p. 328f., as "Eastern Tibetan, second half of the 16th century."
This is probably an early-sixteenth-century portrait and "biography"
of the Fourth Zhwa-dmar painted by a follower of the sMan-ris. It is not
an example of an early sGar-bris. See also the portrait of probably the
same Zhwa-dmar (see p. 85, plate 3), which was seemingly made in about
the same time as the autobiographical thangka and may represent an early
sMan-ris of about the same period.
Rhie (p. 68) compares another Zhwa-dmar portrait (Rhie and Thurman 1996,
no. 113) with the Tenth Karma-pa's paintings in the context of Eastern
Tibetan styles of the second half of the seventeenth century. It would
be better to leave out the Tenth Karma-pa from such stylistic discussions
since he was a special case, not mainstream in any sense. He left no school
behind and his eccentric style is not known to have had imitators.
Rhie's remarks, p. 68, about stylistic developments in the second half
of the seventeenth century in eastern Tibet remain highly hypothetical
and, as she readily admits, the styles "remain difficult to assess
for this period." It would be better to leave out "eastern Tibet"
as a category for pre-eighteenth-century works until several have been
firmly dated and attributed. Even then "Eastern Tibetan" remains
too broad, if one cannot specify either Khams or Amdo.
4. d. A-mdo-bris
A-mdo was home to the famous painting center of Re-bkong, and we are
now fortunate to have photographs (by Rob Linrothe) of scroll-paintings
from this tradition from no later than the 1940s available on the Himalayan Art Project
website. The distinctive features of this later sMan-ris school include
its love of symmetry in the overall composition and outlined clouds with
trailing tails and pastel colors. Pointed mountains sometimes loom prominently
on the horizons of landscapes.
A few paintings from A-mdo have already been published in Bod kyi nang
bstan lha ris kyi sgyu rtsal (mTsho-sngon, mTsho-sngon mi-dmangs dpe-skrun-khang,
1987, reprinted 1994), color plates 4-7. Note that the four thangkas reproduced
on the front and back of the dust jacket (Buddha Shakyamuni, Avalokiteshvara,
Tsong-kha-pa and Padmasambhava) are in a different style, evidently that
of gTsang Tashilhunpo and dKa'-chen Blo-bzang-phun-tshogs. Three possible
candidates from A-mdo in the Rubin collection catalogue are nos. 2 (Ru
39) "Shakyamuni," 36 (Ru 672) "Green Tara with Her Twenty-one
Main Emanations," and 126 (Ru 38) "Tsong Khapa and Life Scenes."
My previous tentative attribution of one painting to A-mdo (Jackson
1996, p. 105, fig. 35), may need correcting to the nearby border district
of rGyal-mo-rong. (The late "A-mdo Lha-bzo" Jamyang, for instance,
came not from Amdo proper, but from nearby rGyal-mo-rong.) The attribution
as "seemingly painted by an artist from A-mdo" has been followed
by Rhie and Thurman 1999, fig. 30.
Regarding "Scenes of the Avadana Kalpalata," no. 10 (Ru 250),
p. 154, Rhie states, "This more closely resembles some Amdo works.
The coloring is dominated by olive-yellow green." Rhie, p. 69, similarly
notes a difference between some later copies of Si-tu Pan-chen's rTogs
brjod dPag bsam 'khri shing paintings, suggesting that some were from
Amdo. She may be right. At least the paintings seem to come from somewhere
in the far-eastern borderlands of Tibet. The artists have copied Si-tu
compositions, but they were not trained in a true sGar-bris style of Khams
or mTshur-phu. It is good to distinguish copies from within a tradition
from those coming from without. Here, judging by the facial features,
the painters worked in a provincial style from some border region.
4.e. Ching Dynasty Court art (China)
The elegant painting of a Gelukpa lama no. 135 (Ru 286), p. 368f., is
not eastern Tibetan art. The fields of evenly distributed stylized clouds
mark it as a late Sino-Tibetan work done in the Ching imperial court style
documented by Theresa Tse Bartholomew.43 Note that this was the style called
"Kadampa" by Chogyam Trungpa 1975, p. 16.
A work possibly from Mongolia or northwestern China is no. 58. Its obviously
foreign flavor marks it as from somewhere outside the "Central Regions
Tibet."
Conclusions
There is danger in trying to force all extant paintings into the Procrustean
bed of the few well-known traditional stylistic categories. Where no firm
evidence exists, silence may be preferable. We are still at the beginning
of such studies, and whatever mistakes we make may well be repeated forever.
In the same way, circumspection is needed when making regional attributions.
Why even speculate if hard evidence is lacking? At the very least, one
should first work out and articulate a few rules of thumb for identifying
each regional school, with the knowledge that such criteria may not work
with hybrid styles or certain special iconographic types.
On the other hand, too much caution
brings paralysis. Thus Rhie's suggestions
should be welcomed for what they are:
brave attempts to expand the frontiers
of stylistic competence in a field that
has stagnated too long. 
 Bibliography
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