Ink and colour on paper

68.5×68.5 cm. 27×27 in

Signed in Japanese and English on bottom left and bottom right

LITERATURE
2001, Leonard-Tsuguharu Foujita. Sa vie, son oeuvre （Vol.2）, Sylvie & Dominique Buisson, ACR Creation Realisation, Paris, p.252
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist by Mr. Zhuang Jiuda, former Chinese Painting Department head of Shanghai Chinese painting Academy
Thence by decent to the previous owner
Important Private Collection, Asia

Great Hermit
in the City –
An Artistic
Focal Point
Modern Master
Lin Fengmian
At the start of the 20th century China faced a thousand urgent tasks and found itself surrounded by covetous foreign powers. In addition, the process of cultural exchange between East and West presented the country with a wide range of challenges and difficulties resulting in reform and opening. In that context, artists with a sense of historical responsibility went overseas to study, where many explored the possibility of combining Eastern and Western elements to modernize Chinese art. These individuals sought to shake off the fetters of old aesthetics and advocate new artistic ideas to promote national salvation and strengthening. As we look back at the tortuous path of “art-based national salvation” from the vantage point of the 21st century, it is clear that Lin Fengmian was not only one of the leading artists in the movement, he also had greatest foresight and influence.
Father of Chinese Modern Art： Seeking to Harmonize East and West
In 1925, Lin Fengmian adopted “harmonizing East and West” as a key teaching principle when he established National Hangzhou Academy of Art. The school, with its embrace of open and forward-looking artistic ideas, influenced a generation of students many of whom went on to become important artists in their own right, including Zao Wou-ki, Zhu Dequn, Wu Guanzhong, Xi Dejin etc. The single greatest contribution made to Chinese art by Lin Fengmian during his lifetime was probably his decision to focus on spiritual elements in combining Eastern and Western art and his pursuit of complementarity. Through the interplay of ink and color he integrated sentimental artistic mood and rationally-ordered composition. After an exhaustive search lasting several decades, Lin ultimately came to view “the combination of Eastern and Western spirit” as his lifelong goal and in so doing opened the way for others to follow, earning him the sobriquet “father of Chinese modern art.”
On this occasion, Guardian Hong Kong’s spring auction brings together three of Lin’s works focused on the classic motifs of “landscapes, ” “beautiful women” and “birds.” Taken together these offer a comprehensive view of Lin Fengmian’s artistic style and technique. Moreover, they not only represent a milestone in the development of Chinese modern art, their creative background and historical importance are also informed by Lin’s decision to tirelessly dedicate his life to art.
Rare Works from the 1960s：
Double Cranes and Lady with Mirror from the Collection of Zhuang Jiuda
The period from the 1950s to 1967, before the Cultural Revolution, is broadly considered the pinnacle of Lin Fengmian’s artistic career. In those years he produced many elaborate masterpieces, but ultimately destroyed almost every one to prevent them being seized by the Red Guards. As a result, very few of Lin’s painting from this era remain. On this occasion, we present Double Cranes and Lady with Mirror, notable for being two of only a handful of works by Lin from the early 1960s known to exist. Both paintings come from the collection of Mr. Zhuang Jiuda, formerly head of the Calligraphy and Painting Department at the Shanghai Painting Institute. Zhuang was a good friend of Lin when he lived almost as a recluse in Shanghai and helped him secure a position as an art teacher at Shanghai Painting Institute in 1956. Indeed, Lin gave these two works to Zhuang as a thank you for his friendship during those turbulent times.
Double Cranes： Finding Oneself in Dancing Lines
In Double Cranes, two birds walk among fallen reeds. The simple posture precisely conveys the quick-witted figures of the birds, the crane flapping its wings portrayed in five or six strokes that are an exquisite combination of speed and strength. This work draws on the transparent colors of Longquan kiln and the predominantly black and white patterns of Cizhou kiln as key expressive elements. Lin combines his skill at crafting lines, learned from practicing sketching during his early years as a student in Paris, with Chinese traditional aesthetic appeal, using a brush to paint delicate lines that are akin to charcoal and an intriguing combination of Western formalism and Eastern impressionism.
In the background of Double Cranes the reeds overlap, ink lines dance lightly in the wind, while the carefree daubed sky and flora advance gradually in indigo and grass green hues. This creates color gradations in the texture of still life objects and an artistic conception of life based on the inner peace felt by the painter as he faces nature. Lin takes Western modernism, particularly the way the Impressionist School captures the life vitality of nature, and combines it with the distant lyricism of traditional literati painting. If we view the painting as a whole, then the brushwork appears casual, but in terms of overall spirit it imbues the cranes with humanity combined with the randomly vitality of art.
Lady with Mirror： From a Cocoon to a Butterfly, Eulogy to Beauty
Lin Fengmian is particularly well known for his paintings of beautiful women. Moreover, the women he paints are the perfect integration of Six Dynasties murals, the traditional elements of Song Dynasty ceramics and the modern language of the Paris School of painting. As such, Lin introduces important changes to classical Chinese painting, making this genre an excellent example of “harmonizing Eastern and Western approaches.” The auctioned work Lady with Mirror offers us an intriguing introduction to this approach.
Square Arrangement and Geometric Shapes
Lady with Mirror employs Lin Fengmian’s standard square arrangement composition. In the 1930s, Lin made a break with the fixed dimensions of traditional Chinese painting by developing square compositions that imbued the structure of his paintings with a Western sense of modernism. In that context, Lady with Mirror captures the external beauty of the figure, but the feel of rich gracefulness and tender elegance adorn that formal beauty with inner beauty, revealing Lin Fengmian’s personal view of beauty. In the painting, the woman is sitting and her oval face, crafted eyebrows, dainty nose, almond eyes, thin cherry-red lips and quiet demeanor create an image of poise, charm and elegance. The geometric simplicity of the facial features can be traced to the influence of the Western modernist school, particularly the works of Henri Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani. Lin Fengmian boldly uses white and black lines in heavy colors, with strokes smoothly unfolding and faintly discernible curved lines used to depict the natural grace of the skirt and a calm and unhurried physicality. In many of Lin’s paintings of women the central characters hold flowers, fans, or play musical instruments. Works where they look into mirrors are rarer, indicating the invaluable nature of this painting.
White Light and Multicolored Sentiment
In Lady with Mirror Lin employs his distinctive fine lines, decorating the edges of the blue-violet colored clothing with white to create fine white lines that coupled with the semi-transparent shadows create the impression of see-through gauze. Because Lin Fengmian’s art studio in Shanghai had only dim lights, he always chose to paint figures with backlight. If we look at Lady with Mirror the artist contrasts the large area of white in the vertically divided background and the woman in the blue-violet dress in the foreground. This approach imbues the painting with a backlit scenario created with reflected light. At the bottom of the picture, between the gown and folds of clothing, the interplay of purple, blue, red and green utilize the adjustment and transition of hues to create a richly introspective layering of color. Lin chooses to highlight the light source and sense of light to strengthen the painting’s multi-dimensional spatial expressiveness and penetrative quality of the light, taking perspective changes in light common to Western painting and transplanting them to the flat world of ink painting. The fact that the woman in the picture displays the subtle charm of a classic beauty, but also the relaxed and random feel of Matisse, is a testament to the strength of Lin’s personal style.
Lotus Pond： The Interplay of Ink and Color in a Scene of Perfection
Importantly, landscape paintings were the focal point of Lin Fengmian’s efforts to reform modern Chinese art. In this context, his landscapes are predominantly scenes from every day life in south China that engender in viewers a sense of yearning for the beautiful and harmonious scenarios. Painted from the 1960s to the 1970s, Lotus Pond is a combination of Lin’s typical panoramic composition, stylized use of color, trademark parallel touches and sentimental images, all of which were a major break with the formalistic language of tradition. This also represents the artist’s bold embrace of the artistic ideal of “harmonizing East and West, ” to which he dedicated his life. Moreover, it is also a testament to Lin’s open mindedness and living a life at peace with the world.
All-inclusive Panoramic Compositions
Although Lin Fengmian introduced full and rich Western compositional forms, he also retained the “flatness” of Eastern painting as a feature of his work. In Lotus Pond, he discards the fixed white spaces of traditional as seen in New Year pictures, Han paintings and the Dunhuang murals painting, in favor of filling the painting. In this way he creates a panoramic composition made up of the lotus leaves and flowers in the foreground, the high reeds in the center and the mist on the distant horizon. In this way, the painting is divided into three interconnected segments, and elements such as the lotus flowers, lotus, leaves and lake are parallel, one on top of the other, through unifying parallel touches that imbue the painting with a distinctive layered cross-section structure.
Innovative Combinations of Ink and Color
In Lotus Pond traditional Chinese ink and Western expressionist colors coexist, combining the beautiful scene portrayed with the sense of beauty felt in the heart of the viewer. The artist utilizes the fact that pastel is thicker than water colors, to organically overlaying green paint on ink, whereby the not-yet dry ink and colors mingle to create unique color changes that are half ink, half paint. In addition, the way in which the artist precisely controls the strength of each overlaid stroke of green color, enables him to create lotus leaves of a myriad different colors. Moreover, the repeat parallel touches ensure the thick pastel is of a rich texture akin to oil painting, depicting the three dimensional texture of the lotus leaves and the omnipresent hidden vitality of life. Whereas impressionist master Claude Monet paints water lilies of rich color and multicolored ripples of light, Lin Fengmian use of one color and ink showcases the spirit of ink painting and water colors, the lilting rhyme of the thickness of the oil and pastels highlighting the artist’s exquisite painting technique. In contrast to Western impressionists who generally considered the use of thick black hues taboo, Lin embraced them in his own distinctive approach, developing traditional ink into eastern colors infused with Eastern culture. Indeed, this approach established a new structure and look for the modernization of Chinese painting.
Lyrical Imagery of a Great Urban Hermit
The flower that is the central focus of Lotus Pond is one of the eight auspicious Buddhist emblems. The fact that the lotus grows in dirt but remains unpolluted makes it an enduring symbol of purity and holiness. At the same time, the “lotus” is a homonym for the word “connection” in Chinese and an allusion to the implied meaning “uninterrupted in an unbroken line.” In the painting, Lin dedicates two thirds of the motif to lotus leaves stood silently side by side and lotus flowers of different sizes hidden between the leaves both near and far, which bloom as the wind blows, creating a wonderful and carefree mood reminiscent of Du Fu. Although the arrangement may seem random, it is in fact a product of great ingenuity, highlighting the artist’s inner pursuit of contentment and beauty, while demonstrating to the world that Lin Fengmian truly was a great hermit in the city.

Price estimate:
HKD: 1, 500, 000 - 2, 500, 000
USD: 192, 300 - 320, 500

Auction Result:
HKD: 6,820,000