Guanyin and Shancai in a bamboo grove, from an album of twenty-four portraits of Guanyin

Each painting in the museum’s album is paired with a four-line gatha (Buddhist verse). In many of the images, Guanyin is accompanied by Shancai (Sudhana), the boy protagonist in the Gandhavyuha chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra, which recounts Sudhana’s pilgrimage to fifty-three spiritual teachers. To Chan Buddhists, the boy’s journey was seen as a metaphor for the gradual deepening of mind-cultivation. Inscribed with a poem:The hunter-bonze gets his roe-buck; the bonze-farmer gets his millet.Shancai maintains the dharmaand worships the bodhisattva’s feet.The bodhisattva does not speak; he looks up reverently; she stares back blanklyYou, self-questioning, seek out the white cloud and green-blue bamboo [teachings].As is the case with many Chinese women artists, little is known of Miss Qiu’s biography beyond the fact that she was the daughter of the famous painter Qiu Ying (active 1530-50). Two of the seals on this album belong to Xiang Li, one of the wives of the famous Ming collector Xiang Yuanbian. Qiu Ying lived with the Xiangs toward the end of his life; Miss Qiu might have lived there then as well and after her father’s death maintained a close relationship with the family. Her album is inspired by a woodblock print series based on paintings by Ding Yunpeng (1547-1628) that were in turn based on a famous handscroll depicting thirty-two manifestations of Guanyin by Li Gonglin (1049-1106) that was owned by Xiang Yuanbian. These pages are part of an album of twenty-four images of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion. Here the child-pilgrim Sudhana (known in Chinese as Shancai) approaches Guanyin in a bamboo grove. According to the Avatamsaka Sutra, Shancai traveled to fifty-three teachers in an effort to learn the Buddhist law, and thus personifies the traditional quest for enlightenment. The accompanying poem criticizes the corrupt monastic establishment while contrasting Shancai’s progressive approach to enlightenment with that of Chan Buddhism, which emphasizes instantaneous enlightenment, as suggested by references to the white cloud and green-blue bamboo.