Flying Attendant on Cloud

late 12th century

Texts of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism vividly describe the Western Paradise in which Amida Buddha resides in the company of bodhisattvas and celestial beings. This beautiful openwork wood sculpture depicts a heavenly being and was originally a component of a large halo behind a statue of Amida Buddha.

Gilded wood

42 × 23 1/4 × 4 5/16 in. (106.7 × 59.1 × 11 cm)

Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection

34.119

Provenance: Dr. Fuller purchased from Yamanaka & Co., Kyoto, Japan; donated to Seattle Art Museum, 1934

Now on view at the Asian Art Museum

Resources

Exhibition HistorySan Francisco, California, San Francisco Museum of Art, Art in Asia and the West, 1957.

San Francisco, California, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Treasures of Japan, 1960.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Japanese Art in the Seattle Art Museum, 1960.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle World's Fair Fine Arts Pavilion, Art of the Ancient East, 1962.

Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Gift to a City: Masterworks from the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection in the Seattle Art Museum, Nov. 3 - 28, 1965. Cat. no. 107.

Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Masterworks in Wood: Japan and China, Nov. 2 - Dec. 5, 1976 (New York, New York, Asia House, Jan. 13 - Mar. 13, 1977).

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, A Thousand Cranes: Treasures of Japanese Art, Feb. 5 - July 12, 1987.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Spring and Summer in Japan, Feb. 28, 2002 - Oct. 13, 2002.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Fall and Winter in Japan, Oct. 22, 2002 - Feb. 23, 2003.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Discovering Buddhist Art - Seeking the Sublime, July 9, 2003 - June 3, 2005.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Luminous: The Art of Asia, Oct. 13, 2011 - Jan. 8, 2012.

New York, Asia Society, Kamakura: Reality and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan, Feb. 9 - May 8, 2016. Text by Ive Covaci. Cat. no. 12, p. 76, reproduced pp. 46, 77.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Boundless: Stories of Asian Art, Feb. 8, 2020 - ongoing.

Published ReferencesFuller, Richard E. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1946, p. 19

Lee, Sherman, Japanese Art at Seattle, Oriental Art, II, 3 Winter 1949 - 1950, p. 91

Handbook, Seattle Art Museum: Selected Works from the Permanent Collections, Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1951, p. 87 (b&w)

Seattle Art Museum Guild, Seattle, Washington, Enagagement Calendar, 1953, no. 32

Highet, G., An Iconog. of Heavenly Beings, Horizon, III, 2, 11/1960, p. 38

Fuller, Richard E., Japanese Art in the Seattle Art Museum: An Historical Sketch, Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1960 ("Presented in commemoration of the Hundredth Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and the United States of America"), no. 37

Munsterberg, Hugo, Der Ferne Osten, 1968, p. 124

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, A Thousand Cranes: Treasures of Japanese Art, copublished by Chronicle Books, San Francisco, California, 1987, ill. p. 102

Trubner, Henry, Michael Knight, William Rathbun, A Thousand Cranes: Japanese Treasures in the Seattle Art Museum, Orientations, June 1987, pp. 50-59, ill. p. 53

Gift to a City: Masterworks From the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection in the Seattle Art Museum, Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum, 1965, no. 107.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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