Most thangkas are painted in many colors. A few are painted almost entirely in one: a black ground for the fierce protectors, a gold ground for the buddhas, a red ground for the deities of power. Here is what each one is, and how to read the lines drawn on it.
A black thangka, in Tibetan nag thang (usually written nagtang or nagthang), is a painting with a black ground, the figures drawn on it mostly in fine gold line. A gold thangka, ser thang (sertang), has a ground of gold. A red thangka is gold line on a ground of vermilion red, which Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) calls tsal tang and Wikipedia calls mar-tang. Jeff Watt, HAR's director and chief curator, sums up the three in one line: "Red is for alarm, power, and resolve. Black is for caution, fear and protection. Gold is for wonder, wealth and opulence."
The ordinary thangka, and the three exceptions
In Watt's essay on ground colors (Tricycle, 2012, reprinted on HAR), the "ground color" is "the basic foundation or background color of a scroll painting." Most thangkas have a multi-colored ground, each part painted in its own colors; HAR says these "are by far the more common," and Watt links them to an early Sanskrit text, the Manjushri Mulakalpa Tantra. Wikipedia gives the Tibetan name for this ordinary kind as tson-tang, "painted in colours," and calls it "the most common type."
Then there are the three single-color grounds. Watt says they were developed in a fixed order: multi-colored first, then black, then gold, and red last. In the tantric system, as HAR explains, four kinds of activity each have a color: "peaceful - white, increasing - yellow, powerful - red, and wrathful - black, or dark blue." Black and red grounds come out of that system. Gold, Watt adds, does not. We take each in turn.
Black thangka (nagtang): gold line on a black ground
What it is
In Watt's words, black ground paintings "are compositions in which the ground preparation for the canvas is of a black color." Wikipedia's shorter definition is the one most people mean when they search for a black and gold thangka: "gold line on a black background." HAR's record for a nineteenth-century Rubin Museum Mahakala (F1997.3.5) lists the materials as "Ground Mineral Pigment, Fine Gold Line, Black Background on Cotton," and calls the method nag thang. So a traditional nagtang is a hand-painted object: a black-prepared cloth, figures drawn over it in gold, with mineral color added where the painter wanted it.
Which deities, and why
On this the sources agree. HAR's main page on the type says: "Historically and traditionally, black ground paintings were appropriate only for wrathful and fearsome subjects." Watt names protectors such as Mahakala and Shri Devi, and meditational deities such as Vajrabhairava and Hevajra, provided they are shown in wrathful or semi-wrathful form.
The reason is in the texts and in the material. Watt traces the black ground to the tantras of Indian Buddhism, and in particular to the twenty-five and fifty-chapter versions of the Mahakala Tantra. The earliest instructions, HAR says, are for wrathful figures drawn on a black surface "created from charnel ground ashes." In his Tricycle piece on black ground paintings, Watt adds that the ash came with remnants of cloth from the charnel ground, "hence the black coloring," and that a painting made this way for a practitioner's own ritual was "kept secret and never displayed publicly."
The Met's Offerings to Wrathful Deities (1983.510.2), late sixteenth to seventeenth century, is described in its label as a "black-ground (Tibetan: nag thang)" painting that hung in a gonkhang, the chapel of a monastery set aside for the wrathful protectors. The Casa Asia collection in Lisbon, describing three eighteenth-century black thangkas of Mahakala and Palden Lhamo, writes that images of Mahakala were kept in "dark secluded rooms of the temples dedicated to guardians of the faith."
When: the sources disagree
The dates depend on who you read and what they are counting. HAR's main page says black ground paintings "can be dated to the end of the first millennium based on literature," with "a few painting examples" in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Watt's Tricycle article dates "the surge in popularity" to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with roots in tantric texts of the ninth to twelfth. Casa Asia says black thangkas "became fashionable in the 17th and 18th century." One counts texts, one surviving paintings, one fashion; there is no single date for the first nagtang.
Black and gold today
The tradition has also changed. Watt notes that contemporary paintings of peaceful deities and the Buddha are now often made on black, red or gold grounds, and HAR's own index has added headings for "Mixed Black Ground & Figures with Colour" and "Modern Black Ground & Other Figures." We come back to this below, because it applies to us.
Gold thangka (sertang): a ground of gold
What it is
A ser thang is a painting whose ground is gold. Watt writes that the gold ground is made from powdered gold, and that the type is "believed to follow an early tradition" of painting directly onto Chinese gold silk, with no prepared ground beneath. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, describing its Vaishravana, Lord of Wealth (late sixteenth to seventeenth century), calls it "the only example in the Museum's collection of a ser thang," notes that the paint "is pure gold suspended in glue," and says the format had been popular among wealthy Tibetans since the fifteenth century. Covering a whole painting in gold, the label adds, is costly, which is why large ones are rare.
The Dharmapala Thangka Centre, a thangka painting school, describes the working method as it teaches it now: gold dust mixed with glue is spread evenly over the prepared canvas, "only a few colors" are used afterward, and ornament and shading are "worked directly into the gold base by polishing with a pointed semi-precious stone." In HAR's notes on a Rubin painting (F1996.7.2), the gold-ground type is described with the drawing "often done in red outline."
Which deities, and why
Here the sources lean the same way without being strict. Watt: gold ground "is commonly used for images of the Buddha, who is said to 'shine like a mountain of gold.'" Wikipedia: "an auspicious treatment, used judiciously for peaceful, long-life deities and fully enlightened buddhas." HAR adds that "Shakyamuni Buddha is the only figure that is textually described as having a gold colour," and that "the gold colour has no iconographic meaning." Watt says the gold ground "developed independent of Tantric theory," shaped by materials, artists and wealthy patrons, so it has no fixed list of deities the way black does. Philadelphia's sertang shows a wealth deity, not a buddha.
Red thangka (tsaltang, martang): gold line on vermilion
What it is
The red ground, Watt writes, is "prepared with iron oxide or vermillion." The Tibetan word mtshal, in the Rangjung Yeshe dictionary, means vermilion, and also cinnabar, red ink and blood. HAR writes the painting type as tsal tang; Wikipedia gives mar-tang, and describes it as gold line on a vermilion ground. Both names are in use. HAR adds that red ground compositions "often include gold outlining, or gold fill for the figures."
Which deities, and why
"Red ground is appropriate for all deities that are classified in Buddhist Tantra as Power Deities," HAR says, along with peaceful deities, powerful teachers and religious leaders. On the small Rubin painting of Kurukulla (F1996.7.2), HAR describes tsal tang as "generally used for power and long-life deities, and bodhisattva figures." Red is the color of the powerful activity, which is why the red goddess Kurukulla belongs on it so naturally (more in Kurukulla).
When
Red came last. "Red ground paintings began to appear as a popular art form in the 17th century," HAR says, especially in Central Tibet under the patronage of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent Desi Sangye Gyatso. HAR also notes that some scholars connect the style to red lacquer book covers introduced in the Yongle period. A good example is the Rubin's portrait of the Fifth Dalai Lama with his previous incarnations (F1996.29.3), gold line on red. Even here the sources differ: the Rubin's own page dates it to the eighteenth century, while HAR's record gives 1600 to 1699.
Watt warns that red and gold grounds can be hard to tell apart, because later artists combined them: "Even though the ground is red," HAR says of some paintings, "the majority of the composition and all of the figures can be gold filled."
How to read the fine line work
On a polychrome thangka, color shows where one thing ends and the next begins. On a black, gold or red ground, the line does that work almost alone. A few things to look for:
- Find the ground. On a crowded painting it can be hard to see. The Rubin's label for its Six-Armed White Mahakala (F1997.29.1) says the artist filled the canvas so densely that the black ground "has almost disappeared," visible only in the bottom corners. Look at the corners and the gaps between flames.
- See what is drawn in line and what is filled. Museum records for traditional nagtang often list "ground mineral pigment" alongside the fine gold line, so some color is usually there; HAR's index has a separate heading for the addition of color to black-ground paintings. Ask what the painter chose to fill and what was left as line.
- Follow the offerings. In that same Rubin painting, the wrathful offerings in the corners are drawn "in the gold outline that is traditional for this genre."
- Tilt your head on gold. On a true sertang, as the Dharmapala Thangka Centre describes, some details are burnished into the gold rather than painted, and only appear when the light moves.
- On red, separate red from red. When a red deity sits on a red ground, gold and white lines are all that divide body, flames and clouds.
- Read the label. Even museum records can disagree with themselves. The Met's Mahakala, Protector of the Tent (2006.105), about 1650, is called a "black-ground painting" in its label, while the medium line reads "distemper and gold on blue silk."
Our black and gold thangkas, honestly described
Our Black & Gold collection uses the look of the nagtang, but these are not traditional black-ground paintings, and we want to be clear about how.
First, how they are made. Each is our own drawing, kept to traditional iconometric proportions and printed on heavy card. It is not hand-painted and not mineral pigment. Elderly lay Buddhists who practice at a temple finish each piece by hand there: they set glass crystals one by one and trace the outlines in gold glitter, which is not gilding. Each piece takes about two days. The frame is 55 by 71 centimeters around an image of 40.2 by 56.2 centimeters, with a silk brocade frame-within-a-frame, a wood frame and an acrylic front. Part of every order goes to that temple.
Second, which deities. By HAR's account, black was traditionally kept for the wrathful. Our Six-Armed Mahakala fits that tradition: a dark-blue, six-armed protector in a blaze of flames, the black ground almost filled with fire and cloud drawn in fine gold line (his meaning is in Six-Armed Mahakala). Most of the others follow the newer practice of placing peaceful figures on black. The Amitabha Buddha sits in meditation in a red patched robe, gold peonies behind him. The Medicine Buddha is the one strong lapis blue in a field of gold and copper line. The Yellow Jambhala, Akashagarbha and a standing Marici are drawn the same way. In all of them the deity's body is in full color and the setting is drawn in gold line, the mixed type HAR lists separately. Going by the sources above, a traditional painter would more likely have put a buddha on gold. We chose black because the colored figure stands out so clearly against it, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Our red-ground pieces sit closer to the old pattern. The Kurukulla Red Thangka is red on red, the goddess, clouds and flames separated only by fine gold and white lines, a power deity on the ground HAR assigns to power deities. White Manjushri on a red ground is a pale bodhisattva with his flaming sword, set in a field of red, which matches HAR's "bodhisattva figures." We do not currently make a gold-ground thangka.
The rest are in the thangka collection. How a traditional thangka is painted is in What Is a Thangka?, and where to hang one in How to Hang a Thangka.
Black, gold and red thangka questions
What is a black thangka called?
Nag thang, usually written nagtang or nagthang: gold line on a black ground.
Why are black thangkas used for wrathful deities?
In the tantric color system black is the color of wrathful activity. HAR traces the black ground to tantras such as the Mahakala Tantra, which describe wrathful figures drawn on a surface made from charnel-ground ash.
Can a peaceful buddha be painted on black?
Today, often. It is not the old tradition: HAR says black ground was traditionally only for wrathful subjects, and has been used for any figure since the twentieth century.
What is a sertang?
A gold-ground thangka. The Philadelphia Museum of Art describes its sertang as painted in pure gold suspended in glue. It is most often used for buddhas.
What does a red thangka mean?
In the tantric system red is the color of powerful activity. HAR says red ground suits power deities, as well as peaceful deities, teachers and religious leaders.
Is the gold on a black thangka real gold?
On traditional paintings, museum records list gold. On ours, no: the outlines are traced by hand in gold glitter, which is not gilding.
Line on dark
A black thangka is mostly what is left out. The painter takes away nearly all the color and keeps the line, and the line has to hold a whole deity, every flame and every offering at the edge. When you stand in front of one, start in a corner, where the ground still shows, and follow the gold inward.
May every line lead somewhere good.
Black & Gold Thangkas · Thangka collection
More from the Journal: What Is a Thangka? · Six-Armed Mahakala · Kurukulla · How to Hang a Thangka
More thangka deities: Amitabha Buddha · Medicine Buddha · Yellow Jambhala