Bishop White Gallery of Chinese Temple Art

According to the Indian Buddhist tradition, Maitreya will be born in to the Kingdom of Ketumati, whose King and Queen are depicted here, at the far left and right, 'taking the tonsure' (i.e., having their heads shaved) as a sign of their conversion to Buddhism.

The Paradise of Maitreya, which measures approximately 16 (height) x 36 (width) feet, is known to have come from the Monastery of Joyful Conversion (Xinghua Si) in southern Shanxi Province, which has long since been destroyed after falling into ruins.

[6] They eventually sold the painting in 1923 to a syndicate of Chinese art dealers from Beijing from whom Bishop White purchased it in 1928 for the Royal Ontario Museum where it was installed in 1933 after being reassembled.

Their creation is attested as being in the year 1195 by an inscription set into the lower back of Guanyin, which makes them unique, as only a very few wooden sculptures of this kind dated to the 12th century are known to have survived.

[8] All of these sculptures were acquired through the efforts of George Crofts, a fur merchant who was also instrumental as an agent in the Chinese art market of the early 20th century, and arrived to the ROM before 1925.

[11] On the east and west walls of the Bishop White Gallery are a pair of two slightly smaller paintings, Homage to the Highest Principle, that depict a procession of Daoist deities and their celestial attendants, sometimes referred to as Chaoyuan tu or the 'Heavenly Court'.

[12] In the Bishop White Gallery, the north wall is occupied by the Paradise of Maitreya, a Buddhist painting but with a similar motif and treatment of the subject matter as what would have been seen in the original Daoist temple.

The design of the Gallery, however, has changed dramatically over the years, beginning with a fairly prosaic display of the objects around the circumference of the room, later progressing in the 1980s to a recreation of an authentic temple setting and, since the mid-2000s, receiving a more modern treatment with an 'open concept' layout.

This was done by imitating a few features of what remains from the Yongle Gong temple complex, long roof beams terminating in curved brackets and a coffered ceiling, together with the same general layout of a rectangular space where devotees could participate in rituals such as meditative circumambulation around a raised altar supporting sculpted images of bodhisattvas.

Indeed, from the 10th century onwards the syncretism of Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian beliefs – 'The Three Teachings' - was reflected even in the similarity of artistic style, which is certainly evidenced in the examples presented in the Bishop White Gallery.