Beneath the Pine, by the Water

Viewing notes

A viewer's written impression — not a buyer review or first-hand record

This polychrome bodhisattva sits beneath a great pine. Her crown neatly set, her eyes lowered in a smile; she sits half-cross-legged on a rock, one bare foot dangling to the stone. Right hand loose at her waist, the left raised, palm up, as if mid-teaching in a low voice. Her upper robe is bright yellow, her skirt orange-red, both woven with dense roundels and vines, sashes spilling down the rock. Behind her the pine trunk twists, its needles heaped in tiered canopies of green touched yellow. At the seat's lower left, a golden tortoise stands head-raised, shell crisply patterned, as if listening; at the lower right, blue waves curl across the rock. One pine, one tortoise, the sound of water — the piece is quiet as an afternoon in the hills — made for devotion, or for a tea room, study or garden corner, where it slows the heart.