An archive of
painted devotion.
tibetanart.com gathers four decades of Robert Beer’s work on Tibetan Buddhist and Newar Tantric art — paintings, line drawings, iconographic annotations, and the artists who shaped his eye. A non-commercial reference archive.
- 393
- Artworks
- 50
- Artists
- 4
- Sections
- 6
- Essays
The archive
What this
site holds.
tibetanart.com is the digital archive of Robert Beer’s lifetime study of Tibetan Buddhist and Newar Tantric art. It gathers the paintings he made and collected, the meticulous line drawings that underpin much of the published reference literature on the tradition, and the written annotations on the iconography and symbolism of each deity.
The site is non-commercial. Nothing here is for sale; the archive exists to keep Robert’s work, his writing, and his reading of the visionary tradition of the Himalayan region in one place where it can be studied, cross- referenced, and revisited.
Robert Beer is a British artist and writer who has spent more than fifty years studying and depicting the iconography of Tibetan Buddhist and Newar Tantric art. He trained with Tibetan masters in Dharamsala in the early 1970s, with Newar painters in Kathmandu, and has worked from London and Oxford studios since 1976.
The autobiographical account — Cardiff to Oxford, by way of Dharamsala and Kathmandu — is the long-form piece in the biography.
Robert Beer
A life at the
drawing board.
Interlude
From the archive.
III · How to read the archive
Finding your way around.
By section
Tibetan, Newar, line drawings
Works are grouped by tradition, then by subject category, so related deities, mandalas, and motifs sit together rather than in date order.
Open
Annotations
Iconography & glossary
Every artwork carries Robert's annotation: deity, symbolic vocabulary, source. Sanskrit and Tibetan terms link to a structured glossary.
Open
Long-form
Essays & blog notes
Longer essays sit in the articles section; the blog carries shorter editorial notes. Everything is indexed and searchable.
Open
IV · Colophon
The archive is the work of Robert Beer, with line drawings and contributions from John F. B. Miles and others who have studied alongside him over the years.
Maintained as a non-commercial reference resource.