Lot 372. A Qingbai 'Boys' bowl, Northern Song dynasty (960-1127); 20 cm, 7 7/8 in. Estimate 20,000 - 30,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
of conical form, the interior incised with two boys amidst scrolling lotus, covered overall in a translucent blue-tinged glaze.
Provenance: Sotheby's London, 15th December 1987, lot 103.
Lot 373. A group of three Qingbai wares, Song dynasty (960-1279); 6 to 14 cm, 2 3/8 to 5 1/2 in. Estimate 30,000 - 50,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
comprising an octagonal box and cover; a six-lobed 'floral' bowl; and a melon-shaped box inscribed with a mark reading Wujia hezi ji.
Provenance: octagonal box: Sotheby's London, 13th June 1989, lot 168.
Lot 374. A Junyao blue-glazed dish, Song-Jin dynasty; 15.5 cm, 6 1/8 in. Estimate 15,000 - 20,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
with shallow rounded sides, covered overall in a greyish-blue glaze thinning to a mushroom colour at the rim, the unglazed base inscribed with a character wu (five).
Provenance: octagonal box: Sotheby's London, 13th June 1989, lot 168.
Lot 375. A carved Longquan celadon tripod incense censer, Early Ming dynasty; 9.5 cm, 3 3/4 in. Estimate 100,000 — 150,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the compressed body rising from three splayed cylindrical legs to a constricted neck and everted rim set with two upright loop handles, the body deftly carved with floral sprays below a classic scroll at the rim, covered overall save for the tips of the legs with a rich sea-green glaze, wood stand.
Provenance: A Japanese private collection.
Lot 376. A Longquan celadon 'Toad' incense burner and cover, Ming dynasty (1369-1644); 14 cm, 5 1/2 in. Estimate 50,000 — 70,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the censer and the cover modelled as a three-legged toad perched on a larger toad, the cover with an opening through the toad's mouth, Japanese box.
Provenance: A Japanese private collection.
Note: Other zoomorphic and figural Longquan vessels include a Ming-dynasty goose-form incense burner in the British Museum, London (inv. no. OA 1938.5-24.10), illustrated in Jessica Harrison-Hall, Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, London, 2001, cat. no. 16:92; a phoenix-shaped incense burner in the Idemitsu Museum, included in Idemitsu Bijutsukan zhin zuroku. Chugoku toji/Chinese Ceramics in the Idemitsu Collection, vol. 3, Tokyo, 1987, no, 796; and a Yuan-dynasty water dropper modelled in the form of a boy riding on a buffalo, excavated from Taishun County in 1983, illustrated in Zhu Boqian, ed., Celadons from Longquan Kilns, Taipei, 1998, p. 242, no. 226.
Lot 377. A Longquan celadon 'Twin fish' dish, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279); 22.3 cm, 8 3/4 in. Estimate 200,000 - 300,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the rounded sides rising from a tapered foot to a flat everted rim, the interior moulded with a pair of addorsed carp, the exterior with lotus petals, covered overall save for the footring in a sage-green glaze, Japanese box.
Provenance: A Japanese private collection.
Note: Dishes of this popular ‘twin fish’ design were produced from the Southern Song dynasty to the Yuan dynasty. Compare a similar Southern Song dynasty example from the collection of Sakamoto Goro, sold in our New York rooms, 16th September 2014, lot 2. For an early example see a dish in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, included in the exhibition Ice and Green Clouds. Traditions of Chinese Celadon, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, 1987, cat. no. 77, together with various related dishes and shards of both Song and Yuan periods, figs 77a-g. Another Song example is published in Longquan qingci [Longquan celadon], Beijing, 1966, pl. 32; and one from the Riesco collection was sold twice in our London rooms, in 1984 and 1986, and again at Christie’s New York, 19th September 2007, lot 260. See also a smaller example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, included in Oriental Ceramics. The World’s Great Collections, vol. 11, Tokyo, 1982, pl. 51; and another from the Sir Percival David collection and now in the British Museum, London, illustrated in Stacey Pierson, Designs as Signs. Decoration and Chinese Ceramics, London, 2001, pl. 11, where the author discusses the ‘twin fish’ motif as an auspicious symbol of harmonious marriage and good fortune (p. 19).
A dish of this type, attributed to the Yuan dynasty, is included in Celadons from Longquan Kilns, Taipei, 1998, pl. 218; two dishes recovered from a ship wrecked off the coast of Korea in 1323 are illustrated in Relics Salvaged from the Seabed off Sinan. Materials I, Seoul, 1985, pl. 11, no. 13; and another dish is published in T. Misugi, Chinese Porcelain Collections in the Near East: Topkapi and Ardebil, Hong Kong, 1981, vol. III, pl. A230.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
Lot 378. A Jian'Hare's fur' bowl, Song dynasty (960-1279); 12.5 cm, 4 7/8 in. Estimate 80,000-120,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the conical body rising to a shallow groove at the mouth, applied in a black glaze with cascading 'hare's fur' streaks and pooling short of the foot.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
Lot 379. A black-glazed 'Oil spot' jar and cover, Song dynasty (960-1279); 14.2 cm, 5 5/8 in. Estimate 20,000-30,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the ovoid body rising from a recessed base to an angled shoulder and short neck, covered overall save for the base and rims in a black glaze suffused with iridescent 'oil spots', the glaze stopping neatly above the foot.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
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Lot 8001. A highly important and extremely rare lacquered spindle-leg table, Five Dynasties-Northern Song dynasty (907-1127); 19 1/2 in. (49.5cm.) high, 41 in. (123.5 cm.) wide, 14 3/4 in. (37.5 cm.) deep. Estimate HKD 3,000,000 - HKD 5,000,000. Price realised HKD 3,700,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018.
The plain rectangular top with beaded edge on the sides is set with everted flanges. Supported on each narrow side by elegantly curved spindled legs, the whole is raised on thick trapezium shoe feet. The table is covered overall in a thin layer of viscous black lacquer suffused with network of characteristic fine crackles.
Provenance: Acquired in Japan in the early 2000s.
The dating of this lot is consistent with the result of a C14 test, conducted by Rafter GNS Science, sample No. PH/RC11/233, 28 March 2011.
Christie's. Beyond Compare: A Thousand Years of the Literati Aesthetic (Evening Sale), Hong Kong, 26 November 2018
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Lot 8003. Bada Shanren (1626-1705), Landscapes and Calligraphy. A set of twelve album leaves, mounted as six hanging scrolls, ink on paper. Each leaf measures 24 x 13.5 cm (9 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.). Estimate HKD 6,000,000 - HKD 10,000,000. Price realised HKD 24,100,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018.
Six leaves of painting, each leaf with an artist’s seal. Six leaves of calligraphy, five leaves signed and one leaf inscribed and signed, with a total of seven seals of the artist.
Provenance: Previously in the collection of Matsubayashi Keigetsu
Literature: Zhang Heng, Notes on the Authentication of Painting and Calligraphy from the Muyan Studio, Cultural Relics Publishing House, Beijing, December 2000, pp.981-984.
Wang Chaowen, Full Collection of Bada Shanren, Vol. 4, Jiangxi Fine Art Publishing House, Nanchang, 2000, pp. 840-845.
Yiyuan Duoying, No. 17, People Fine Arts Publishing House, Shanghai, 1982.
Zhang Daqian, Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang (The Great
Wind Hall) Collection, Vol. 3, Benrido, Kyoto, 1955, pl. 31-36.
Recounting Reemergence: Dispelling Sixty Years of Myths on the Collection History of Bada Shanren’s Landscapes and Calligraphy
In 1699, Zhu Da (Bada Shanren) created Landscapes and Calligraphy dedicated to a gentleman friend. The eighteen leaf album was executed in ink on paper. The first six leaves reproduce the famous Preface to the Orchid Pavilion. The remaining twelve leaves constitute six pairs of landscapes and original verses.
During the Qing period, historic works of painting and calligraphy from the preceding dynasties were especially prized. As such, the genius of Bada Shanren’s free and expressive brushwork in the work was not recognised in his own day, and it is not known in records of the period. Landscapes and Calligraphy first comes to light through Zhang Daqian’s 1955 publication Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang. In December 1949, Zhang Daqian departed Chengdu on a direct flight to Taiwan. He took with him 50 of his own copies made from the frescoes at Dunhuang, along with numerous classical works of painting and calligraphy. These works accompanied him on his itinerant lifestyle, which took him from Hong Kong, to India, Argentina and many other destinations. In 1954 Zhang moved to Mogi das Cruzes in Brazil, buying over 200 acres of land. Here he built a Chinese style garden, which he named the Garden of Eight Virtues, or Bade Yuan. During this time, Zhang was in robust health, travelling between Japan, Brazil, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and America. From a solid base in the art worlds of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, he also sought to break into the West. This was an expensive undertaking, and stretched his purse beyond the funds raised through his selling exhibitions. To meet this financial need, Zhang decided to sell off some of the historic works that had left Chengdu with him. In autumn 1954, Zhang began compiling a selection of classical Chinese paintings and calligraphic works from his own collection, to be published as Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang. In January 1955, after the closure of his latest exhibition in Hong Kong, Zhang flew direct to Japan to supervise printing of this publication. In Winter of that year its four imposing volumes were published in Japan, coinciding with the opening of Zhang’s latest Japanese exhibition. This publication cemented Zhang’s international reputation as a connoisseur, collector and practitioner of classical Chinese painting and calligraphy.
The pages of Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang lead the reader through an astounding array of classical works from the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Soon after its publication, this compendium of Zhang’s collection attracted distinct attention from the metropolitan centres of New York and Beijing. In New York, Japanese American antique dealer Joseph Umeo Seo (1911-1998) brought Zhang’s catalogue to the attention of preeminent collector John M. Crawford Jr. (1913-1988). Together Seo and Crawford acquired several of the works listed in the catalogue. In 1962 Lawrence Sickman (1907- 1988) organised an exhibition of Crawford’s collection in New York. The accompanying volume edited by Sickman, Catalogue of the Exhibition of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting, includes 19 works also found in Zhang’s Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang. These span the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, including exceptional examples by leading masters of each period. Though we know it to be a substantial figure, it is impossible to calculate the exact number of classical paintings and calligraphy pieces Crawford acquired from Zhang’s collection.
Turning our attention to Beijing, preeminent connoisseur Zhang Heng (Zhang Congyu, 1915-1963) discussed Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang in his late 1950s publication Notes on the Authentication of Painting and Calligraphy from the Muyan Studio. Zhang Heng was a leading authority in connoisseurship: a member of the Palace Museum’s Committee for the Authentication of Cultural Relics, Deputy Editor in Chief of the Cultural Relics Bureau Publishing House, and Deputy Head of the Cultural Relics Bureau. In his Notes, he comments on several works by Bada Shanren recorded in Zhang Daqian’s Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang, and the discussion of Landscapes and Calligraphy reads as follows:
Bada Shanren, album of poems and paintings, six leaves.
Six leaves in ink and colour on paper, measuring … high and … wide. The landscapes are exceptionally fine, each leaf paired with an inscription. The dimensions of the inscriptions match those of the painting, and are undated. On the basis of the signature the album was likely produced when the artist was in his 70s. The album includes a freehand copy of Wang Xizhi’s (303-361) Preface to the Orchid Pavilion, which is recorded separately…. An accompanying semi-cursive script inscription dates the work to the yimao year, in the 38th year of the Kangxi reign period (1699), when Bada Shanren was 74 years of age.
Zhang Heng’s Notes approach the work in two parts, documenting the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion in a separate entry from Bada’s twelve album leaves of paired painting and original verse. He describes the landscapes as “exceptionally fine”, an appraisal based upon its publication in Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang. Zhang Heng was clearly deeply familiar with Bada’s oeuvre. His preliminary estimate, made before the transcription of the full inscriptions, states that the work dates from Bada Shanren’s seventies. This correlates directly with the 1699 date he later encountered on the accompanying inscription, when Bada was 74 years of age. This is testimony to Zhang Heng’s careful and protracted study. In the biography of Zhang Heng co-authored by his three children, they give the following account of their father:
Our father undertook this Herculean labour of documentation outside of his working hours… Every evening after finishing work and dinner he would immerse himself in a pile of books, deep into the night. Yet every evening there would be visitors, and our father would have to set his work aside…. Every evening he would wait for his guests to leave, whereupon he would resume his work, carrying on late into the night.
This Herculean project was the compilation of Notes on the Authentication of Painting and Calligraphy from the Muyan Studio. Zhang Heng’s Notes exemplifies assiduous scholarship, diligently produced in the little spare time he had available. His work has rightly been the subject of serious, in-depth study by subsequent generations, who have lauded his mindset, erudition, selfpossession and insight.
Following its first publication in Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang, the location of Landscapes and Calligraphy on the Orchid Pavilion became a protracted mystery. In 1982, the Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe published the 17th edition of Yiyuan Duoying, focused on Bada Shanren. This referenced the twelve leaves of paired painting and calligraphy. However, Bada’s preceding six leaves reproducing the Preface to the Orchid Pavilion were omitted. In Zhang Heng’s Notes, the two are necessarily separated as part of his systematic treatment of painting and calligraphy as distinct artforms. Yiyuan Duoying presents no discernable justification for its bisection of the album.
There is a recurrent error in the recorded provenance of Poems and Paintings on the Orchid Pavilion Preface. In Bada Shanren Quanji, vol. 4, the eighteen leaves of the work are captioned as “in the collection of John M. Crawford Jr.”. In Bada Shanren Shichao’s
catalogue of Bada’s poems inscribed on paintings, the work is again recorded as in Crawford’s collection. There is also an index of extant paintings by Bada Sharen at the end of volume four of Bada Shanren Quanji. While this index clearly records private and public collections, both within China and internationally, Landscapes and Calligraphy is inexplicably omitted. How can we determine if the work was part of Crawford’s collection? The assertions of the aforementioned studies are certainly questionable. Preeminent scholar of Bada Shanren Wang Fangyu (1913-1997) repeatedly stated that the location of the work, and the identity of its owner, were unknown. Wang was a Chinese immigrant to America, and a close associate of Crawford. The two men were born in the same year. In The Calligraphy of Bada Shanren, Wang includes the following short entry, entitled ‘Bada Shanren’s Preface to the Orchid Pavilion’:
No. 12. Simao year (1699), 8th month. Former collection of Zhang Daqian. Current location unknown. Recorded in Masterpieces
of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang, vol. 3. Landscapes and Calligraphy, six leaves (authentic). (From Bada Shanren Quanji, vol. 5. pp. 1205.)
In his 1990 Yale U.P. publication Master of the Lotus Garden: The Life and Art of Bada Shanren, Wang repeats his assertion that the location of Landscapes and Calligraphy is unknown (p.270, appendix C, ‘dated works’no. 119). Once again, the only reference Wang gives is Zhang Daqian’s catalogue of 1955. Wang was the preeminent scholar and collector of Bada Shanren outside of China. Yet he never knew the location of Landscapes and Calligraphy. He never had the opportunity to view it in person, and continually referred to it through Zhang Daqian’s 1955 publication. Thus, we can be certain that Landscapes and Calligraphy was not in the collection of Wang’s friend John M. Crawford Jr.
There are some who claim that Landscapes and Calligraphy was in Wang Fangyu’s own collection. However, there is no discernible
basis for this. Were Wang to have this work within his family collection, it is not conceivable that he would have still omitted to mention this in his own 1990 publication. Moreover, the work is not included among the thirty pieces recorded in the 2003 publication of Wang and his wife’s collection: In Pursuit of Heavenly Harmony: Paintings and Calligraphy by Bada Shanren from the Estate of Wang Fangyu and Sum Wai.
Following its publication in 1955 in Zhang Daqian’s Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from Ta Feng Tang, Landscapes and Calligraphy
seemed to have disappeared without trace. For more than sixty years its location was unknown to the international community of collectors. The consignment of twelve leaves of paired painting and verse from Landscapes and Calligraphy, offered this autumn
in Christie’s Hong Kong, is hugely beneficial for the scholarly record of this work. This album travelled with Zhang Daqian
through his itinerant life. As these travels included Zhang’s brief residency in Hong Kong, the reappearance of this album in Christies is something of a homecoming.
Lamentably, the album leaves of Landscapes and Calligraphy have been remounted as six vertical scrolls. Each scroll displays the paired calligraphy above the corresponding painting in a Japanese style mount. In its present format, Bada Shanren’s preceding six-leaf rendition of Preface to the Orchid Pavilion is lost. Yet this remounting in no way detracts from the painting and calligraphy’s compelling and thought-provoking beauty. The collection history of Landscapes and Calligraphy has been a mystery for over sixty years. As with many of Bada Shanren’s great accomplishments, these sixty years will likely remain one of art history’s enduring enigmas.
Christie's. Beyond Compare: A Thousand Years of the Literati Aesthetic (Evening Sale), Hong Kong, 26 November 2018
Lot 380. A Jian'Hare's fur' bowl, Song dynasty (960-1279); 12.4 cm, 4 7/8 in. Estimate 20,000-30,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the conical body rising to a shallow groove at the mouth, applied in a black glaze with cascading brown 'hare's fur' streaks and pooling short of the foot.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
Lot 381. A Ding-type jar, Song dynasty (960-1279); 14.5 cm, 5 3/4 in. Estimate 20,000-30,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the compressed globular body divided into nine lobes, covered overall in an ivory-tinged glaze.
Provenance: Sotheby's London, 10th June 1986, lot 101.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
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Lot 8009. Zao Wou-Ki (Zhao Wuji, 1920-2013), 20.01.69, signed in Chinese and signed ‘ZAO’ (lower right); signed ‘ZAO Wou-Ki’, titled and dated ’20.1.69’ (on the reverse), oil on canvas, 115.8 x 81 cm. (45 5/8 x 31 7/8 in.). Painted in 1969. Estimate HKD 16,000,000 - HKD 24,000,000. Price realised HKD 15,700,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018.
Provenance: Private Collection, Germany
Private Collection, Asia
This work is referenced in the archive of the Fondation Zao Wou- Ki and will be included in the artist’s forthcoming catalogue raisonne prepared by Francoise Marquet and Yann Hendgen (Information provided by Fondation Zao Wou-Ki).
Literature: Jean Leymarie, Zao Wou-Ki, Documentation by Françoise Marquet, Hier et Demain Editions, Paris, France and Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona, Spain, 1978 (illustrated in black and white, plate 384, p. 296).
Jean Leymarie, Zao Wou-Ki, Documentation by Francoise Marquet, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, USA, 1979 (illustrated in black and white, plate 384, p.296).
Jean Leymarie, Zao Wou-Ki, Documentation by Françoise Marquet Editions Cercle d’Art, Paris, France et Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelone, Espagne, 1986 (illustrated in black and white, plate 416, p. 336).
Note: "I hope I make people feel that they can let themselves go and roam freely everywhere in my paintings — just as I do when painting them."— Zao Wou-ki
In the works of Zao Wou-ki, images of the natural landscape often exist within the abstract, lyrical impressions that greet our eyes. And in Chinese landscape paintings, the subject depicted is in fact always the artist himself: a picture of his inner universe, and the projection of an inner world. It is a personal experience of space that naturally gives rise to the scenery within the work. This traditional Chinese approach to Expressionism has its counterpart in many modern Western artistic concepts, though with implications that sometimes reach deeper. Zao Wou-ki understood this traditional artistic vocabulary, and attempted to introduce it into Western painting. Borrowing quintessential aspects of both Eastern and Western painting, he believed, could create a unique expressive style; he hoped to be a successor to the literati painters of old and imbue his works with their spirit. By the 1960s, Zao Wou-ki had completely embraced these traditional Chinese concepts within his paintings, developing a unique and personal style of lyrical abstraction which ultimately helped elevate literati tradition. He succeeded at transforming and projecting onto his canvases the depths of emotion from his own life and the profound reaches of his own inner world. Zao Wou-ki once offered his own analysis: “Any work of mine becomes a painting of feelings: it is nothing more than a naked display of my own emotions and moods.”
The grey-white space that floats around and through Zao’s 20.01.69 (Lot 8009) plays an important compositional role, helping create the remote, mysterious, and dreamlike world of the painting. Northern Song painter Guo Xi, in his treatise On the Painting of Mountains and Waters, wrote, “Whoever takes up a brush to paint must unite heaven and earth. What do we mean by heaven and earth? We mean that in a work one and a half measures high, a space should be left above for heaven and a space below for earth; in between, the conception takes shape and the space is defined.” Above and below, and on the left and right of the painting, Zao Wou-ki spreads grey-white pigments in broad strokes, producing a sense of deep space as regions of mingled brushstrokes and blocks of colour emerge toward the center. Much as Guo Xi did in his Old Trees, Level Distance, Zao Wou-ki makes full use of empty space, allowing the visual field to extend virtually beyond the borders of the canvas, inviting viewers to roam in this vast imaginative space where solid forms and empty space seem to merge and dissolve. But by means of his pure, total abstraction, Zao Wou-ki moves beyond Guo Xi, making his entire canvas an expression of just that kind of deep, remote emptiness. At the same time, Zao’s sensitive positioning of his empty, white spaces seems to be modeled after the tripartite division of pictorial space in such works as Ni Zan’s The Rongxi Studio. Foreground, middle ground, and distance become clearly separated and take on real dimensions, and the sense of a landscape painting begins to emerge indistinctly from the abstract imagery of Zao’s painting.
For Zao Wou-ki, the concepts behind calligraphy and painting were closely linked in that both, through the force and movement of the brush, express the inner feeling of the artist in artistic form. In 20.01.69, Zao’s fine, tangled, interwoven brushstrokes, with their suggestion of speed, emerge from the misty background to enrich the textures of the work; the graceful beauty of these lines recalls the calligraphy of the Song Dynasty’s Huizong Emperor. At the same time, by means of these lines, Zao weaves the different areas of the canvas tightly together. The result is tension and a sense of movement, like the images of dragons soaring through clouds and mists in Chen Rong’s Nine Dragons. It is in this sense of moving energy that we find a concrete expression of the inner themes and melodies moving in the artist’s soul. Zao Wou-ki’s exceptional sensitivity of colour is also in evidence here. Dark, inky tones in the center diffuse and spread with variations in density, thickness, and weight to produce clear layers, while thin washes of violet and blue-green spread among them like the flickering of the Northern Lights. Zao’s use of denser green-brown tones helps to firmly link his dense pigments and wild brushstrokes with the areas of lighter, more dilute colour, and in managing the fine transitions between these highly contrasting areas, he constructs this ideal world—vast, deep, and filled with poetry. In other Zao Wou-ki works, the artist also subtly alludes to the same Eastern connotations so strongly set out here; in all of his carefully managed lines and colours, the artist was always concerned with an implicit sense of an inner world of landscape imagery. Through that imagery, he arouses a viewer’s own half-buried impressions of nature and other memories. As the artist once said, “I hope I make people feel that they can let themselves go and roam freely everywhere in my paintings — just as I do when painting them.”
Christie's. Beyond Compare: A Thousand Years of the Literati Aesthetic (Evening Sale), Hong Kong, 26 November 2018
Lot 382. A white glaze box and cover, Five Dynasties (907-960); 10.6 cm, 4 1/8 in. Estimate 15,000-20,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
of circular form, with straight sides rising at an angle from a low foot to a gently domed cover, applied overall with an ivory-tinged transparent glaze.
Provenance: C.C. Teng & Co., Taipei (label).
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
Lot 383. A black-glazed 'Oil spot' vase, yuhuchunping, Song dynasty (960-1279); 23 cm, 9 in. Estimate 60,000-80,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the pear-shaped body covered overall in a black glaze suffused with iridescent 'oil spots', the glaze stopping at the foot revealing the body, the mouth rim dress in white slip, the base inscribed with a wen character.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
Lot 384. Two Qingbai 'Boys' bowls, Song dynasty (960-1279); 19.4 and 19.8 cm, 7 5/8 and 7 3/4 in. Estimate 30,000-40,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
the smaller bowl of circular section; the other with a six-lobed rim; both of conical form, the interior carved with two boys amidst scrolling lotuses, applied overall save for the base with a blue-tinged transparent glaze suffused with crackles.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
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Lot 8012. Wu Hufan (1894-1968), Wood and Rock, After Su Shi and The Cold Food Observance in Running Script. Handscroll, ink on paper, 28 x 275 cm. (11 x 108 ¼ in.). Inscribed and signed, with four seals of the artist. Dated summer, yisi year (1965). Further inscribed and signed, with one seal of the artist. Calligraphy inscribed and signed, with two seals of the artist. Two collector’s seals of Zhou Tuimi (b. 1914). Frontispiece inscribed and signed by Zhou Tuimi, with three seals. Estimate HKD 3,000,000 - HKD 5,000,000. Price realised HKD 5,140,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018.
Literature: Wang Shuzhong, Chen Hansu ed., Chronology of Wu Hufan, Dongfang Publishing House, Shanghai, July 2017, p.532.
A Journey to the Past
As a collector, authenticator, painter, calligrapher, poet, and writer, Wu Hufan was extraordinarily accomplished in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in a family with generations of scholar-officials and received a classical education. Surrounded by genuine works of art from the past, he solidified his strong foundation in traditional culture. He lived his entire life and also became renowned within the realm of traditional Chinese culture. The four main sources of his collection are:
1. He inherited his paternal grandfather Wu Dacheng’s extensive collection
2. He obtained objects from his maternal grandfather Shen Yunchu, mostly paintings and calligraphy by Dong Qichang
3. Dowry from his wife Pan Jingshu and gifts from her family, such as Song dynasty rubbings of Ouyang Xun’s calligraphy
4. His own purchases
Wu Hufan was familiar with various styles of calligraphy in paintings, and inscriptions on archaic bronzes and stone tablets. His vast collection earned him the nickname “the only eye” in Shanghai Bund.
In addition to being a master of paintings and calligraphy and a skilled authenticator, Wu was the paradigm of a traditional southern literatus. He learned painting as a child from copying old paintings. Such time-tested method has no shortcut, but it allows the learner to grasp the characteristics of brushwork and ink usage of various schools. It also deepens one’s understanding and research of painting history. In 1918, when Wu Hufan was living in Shanghai and selling painting, he became well-known as the “grandson of Dacheng”. As he approached middle age, he concentrated on the landscape of Song and Yuan dynasties. His style was one of elegant archaism, with no parallel at the time.
Wu Hufan devoted his entire life to learn from the classical works of art, and to be a connoisseur and collector of them. With his firm grasp and practice of ancient inscriptions, painting, calligraphy, literature and opera, he lived a life which fully demonstrated the elegant cultivations of a traditional literatus. He painted Wood and Rock after Su Shi by way of emulation in 1965, when he was seventy-one years old. Confucius has said that “When one reaches seventy years in age, one can do as he wishes without violating propriety.” Following the footsteps of his family members, since his youth Wu Hufan has immersed himself in literature and the arts for over sixty years. His focus on paintings of the Song and Yuan dynasties after midlife endeared archaism to him. As we view this work, we could see that he has achieved the complete and nuanced control of the brush. This painting shares much with Su Shi’s original and is exceptional in its own right. After he finished the painting, Wu Hufan enhances it further with an inscription of Su Shi’s Cold Food Observance. The calligraphy is similar to the spring blossoming branches, swaying in the breeze. It is precisely like that saying that once the spirit is attained the form is forgotten, once the qi (spiritual ether) is flowing the structure is set, the spirit, form, ether, and structure are all found at the tip of the brush. Wood and Rock made its way to Japan, since then it has made myriad of earthly appearances in its homeland China through the technology of collotype printing. Wu Hufan based his emulation on one of such earthly appearances in his search of its original heavenly form. Indeed, he has obtained its spirit and structure.
Christie's. Beyond Compare: A Thousand Years of the Literati Aesthetic (Evening Sale), Hong Kong, 26 November 2018
Lot 385. A Qingbai bottle vase, yuhuchunping, Song dynasty (960-1279); 23 cm, 9 in. Estimate 10,000-20,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
of slender pear-shape with a waisted neck and a trumpet mouth, applied overall with a translucent pale celadon glaze.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
Lot 386. Two Longquan celadon wares, Ming dynasty (1368-1644); 12.6 and 6.3 cm, 5 and 2 1/2 in. Estimate 30,000-(0,000 HKD. © Sotheby's.
of slender pear-shape with a waisted neck and a trumpet mouth, applied overall with a translucent pale celadon glaze.
Sotheby's. Chinese Art, HongKong, 28 november 2018, 10:15 AM
Lot 8015. Jin Nong (1687-1763), Seeking inspiration amongst plum blossoms. Handscroll, ink and colour on paper, 32.5 x 131.5 cm. (12 3/4 x 51 3/4 in.). Entitled, inscribed and signed, with one seal of the artist. Dated tenth day, tenth month, xinsi year (1761) and dedicated to Yinluo. Estimate HKD 6,000,000 - HKD 8,000,000. Price realised HKD 16,900,000. © Christie's Images Ltd 2018.
Frontispiece by Chen Hongshou (1768-1822), with two seals
Colophons by Chen Hongshou, Fan Fengxie (18th-19th Century), Lu Yushu (18th-19th Century), Shi Mo (19th Century) and Zhang Buzhan (19th Century), with a total of eleven seals
Sixteen collector’s seals, including three of Shen Weiyu (19th Century), three of Jin Futing (19th Century), three of Li Yufen (19th Century), one of Zhang Buzhan (19th Century) and four of Yang Shoushu (1863-1944)
Titleslip by Tan Zekai (1889-1948), with one seal
Titleslip and ‘Collection of A Hundred Plum Blossoms Studio’ label on the wooden box.
Literature: Jin Nong’s Painting Register, Shandong Pictorial Publishing House, Jinan, November 2010, p.185.
Jin Nong Shu Hua Ji, Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House, Shanghai, February 1996, Chronicles of Jing Nong p.5.
Wang Feng Zhu, Zhou Jiyin ed., Painting Catalogue of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Fine Art Publishing House, Nanjing, June 1991, p.286.
Bian Xiaoxuan ed., Chronicles of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, (I), Jiangsu Fine Art Publishing House, Nanjing, July 1990, p.262.
Shanghai Museum ed., Seals and Signatures of Chinese Calligraphers and Painters, Cultural Relics Publishing House, Beijing, December 1987, pp.591-593, pl.47 and 63.
Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Studies Society ed., Chronicles of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Calligraphers and Painters, The Liberal Arts Press, Taipei, 1975,p.372.
Guo Weiqu ed., Chronicles of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Calligraphers and Painters, Chinese Classical Art Publishing House, Beijing, November 1958,p.372.
Fine Art Monthly, No. 9, Chinese Painting Studies Society, Beijing, 1930, p.16.
“This year (1761)… (Jin Nong) creates Seeking Inspiration Amongst Plum Blossoms.”
- Zhang Yuming, Chronicles of Jin Nong
In 1761, Jin Nong (1687-1763), at the age of 75, executed Seeking Inspiration Amongst Plum Blossoms and dedicated it to his very good friend, Yinluo or Zhang Yuemei. Zhang’s free and easy character allowed him to befriend many literati of his time. In 1816, his grandson Yunchen or Zhang Tingjie asked his colleague of six years and friend, Chen Hongshou (1768-1822) the scholar-official, to inscribe a colophon and frontispiece on this painting of his family collection. Zhang was so proud of this work by Jin Nong that he further showed it to his friends including Fan Fengxie and Lu Yushu (both 18th-19th Century) whose colophons dated 1818 and 1822 respectively can be found on this handscroll. A total of sixteen collector’s seals, including those of illustrious art collectors and connoisseurs like Jin Futing (19th Century), Li Yufen (19th Century) and Yang Shoushu (1863-1944) are identified in this work. Its titleslip and the label on its wooden box reveal that the painting was once belonged to ‘A Hundred Plum Blossoms Studio’ owned by Chen Shutong (1875-1966), a respected politician and an avid collector of Chinese painting. Seeking Inspiration Amongst Plum Blossoms have been cherished by the current owner and his family for more than seven decades.
Devoted to Plum Blossom – Unrelenting and Extraordinary
First amongst the Four Gentlemen in Chinese art, plum blossom serves as a metaphor for the virtues of a scholar: resolute, noble and pure. Since the Song dynasty, literati have been praising plum blossom in poetry and painting. It thrives in the desolate and severe winter, just like a noble person being unswervng and fearless under adverse conditions. A native of Hangzhou where many eminent literati lived, Jin Nong was one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, a group of painters famous for their unconventional artistic styles. Jin’s unsurpassed talent in literature and the arts made him the best amongst them. Since 1753 he had been prolific in painting plum blossom for expressing his sentiments and catering the demand and taste of the rich in Yangzhou. Unique and out of the ordinary, Jin’s plum blossom paintings are creations inspired by the unusual and soul-revealing examples of his predecessors, and works by his
contemporaries such as Wang Shishen (1685-1759), Gao Xiang (1688-1753) and Li Fangying (1696-1755).
Quaint and Simple, Alienated yet Evocative
Seeking Inspiration Amongst Plum Blossoms exemplifies the flourishing moment in a poetic way. One frigid day by the shore, a scholar, standing tall beside a plum tree with pink blossoms surrounded by those with white blossoms, was contemplating with his hands holding in the sleeves. Behind him was his servant, brewing tea under the white plum blossoms while looking at his master, who seemed to be wondering what his verse of the day would be. In a descriptive mode highly charged with calligraphic brushstrokes stemmed from the seal and clerical scripts and together with the use of light ink and colour washes, Jin Nong portrayed an alienated and a simple yet evocative setting which possibly drawn from his own experience. The inscription and signature in chiseled, idiosyncratic characters dangled from the top left corner of the scroll compliment the composition and accentuate the quaintness of the painting.
Of all the plum blossom paintings by Jin Nong, very few are rendered in colour and those modeled in a story-telling fashion are extremely rare. A peach blossom painting of similar composition and use of light ink and colour, is found on the eighth leaf of Figures and Landscapes album by the artist dated 1759, now in the Palace Museum of Beijing (see Illustration).
Jin Nong, The eighth leaf of Figures and Landscapes album, 1759, Palace Museum of Beijing.
Christie's. Beyond Compare: A Thousand Years of the Literati Aesthetic (Evening Sale), Hong Kong, 26 November 2018