Oil on board

61×45.5 cm. 24×17 7/8 in

Signed in Japanese and English, located in Japanese and dated on bottom left； Dedicated in French, signed in French and Japanese, dated on reverse

LITERATURE
2007, FOUJITA Inédits, ADAGP Paris, Paris, p.107
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist by original owner
30 May 2009, Beijing Chengxuan Spring Auction, Lot 14
Important Private Collection, Asia

At the beginning of the 20th century, a great number of Chinese nationals went to Japan to study. This phenomenon led a large number of European modernist paintings, advocating individuality and subjectivity （post-impressionism, fauvism, cubism）, to appear in China, laying the foundation for the process of the modernization of Chinese art. Ting Yinyung went to Japan in 1920 to major in Western painting. His obsession with modernist painting, especially with Matisse, the leader of fauvism, allowed him to absorb the essence of that style and form his own, unique technique, characterized by brilliance, vividness, conciseness, and flexibility, which earned him the reputation of being the “Matisse of the East”. After returning to China in 1925, he actively promoted the spread of fauvism in China while stressing the importance of tracing Chinese tradition. The exploration of the local culture enabled him to fuse the qualities of the ancient and the modern as well as of the East and the West. His works are not limited by stereotype and each have strong individualized features. Ting, together with Lin Feng-mien and Guan Liang, are known as the “Three Cantonese Geniuses” and are recognized as being among the most important pioneers of modern Chinese art.
One of the Master’s Four Oil Paintings of the Buddha
Two of Ting Yinyung’s large paintings were displayed in 1958 at the 1st Exhibition by the Fine Arts Faculty of New Asia College in Hong Kong. One of them was a large-scale painting of a sitting bodhisattva with crossed ankles, which means that Ting began creating Buddha-themed paintings before 1958. The three other Buddha-centered paintings include the Buddha Statue （1971）, Buddha （1960s）, and Seated （1963）, of which only Seated shows the crossed-ankles position. Bodhisattva is one of Ting’s four surviving Buddha-themed works and one of the two featuring the stance. This painting is currently the one remaining work that fully shows Ting’s style and therefore possesses a high collection value.
Bodhisattva was stored by a student during the early stage of Ting’s stay in Hong Kong. As this Buddha theme is relatively rare for this artist, the painting not only broadens awareness regarding Ting’s style, but it is also an important piece for studying his artistic development.
The Essence of Chinese Aesthetics
The crossed-ankles position originated from Buddhist statues dating back to the Wei, Jin, Southern & Northern dynasties （220-589 CE）. This posture was assumed by kings and aristocrats in Early India and Central Asia and therefore symbolizes noble status. On Ting’s painting, the bodhisattva is wearing a crown featuring small Buddha figurines. The halo around his head, featuring a flame pattern accompanied by a floral motif, symbolizes the Divine Light. He has curved eyebrows, a straight nose, and a small mouth, and he is overlooking all life in the universe with crinkled eyes and a slight smile, as if ready to rush with help as soon as he hears any sound filled with pain. The bodhisattva is wearing a long tunic, and his shoulders are covered with a cloak, the clothing being smooth and simple. His right hand displays the abhayamudrā （gesture of fearlessness）, while the left hand is lying relaxed on his knees, as he is sitting with ankles crossed. His posture seems calm, elegant, and dignified, the overall silhouette well-proportioned and memorable.
Ting Yinyung was always keen of depictions of sitting bodhisattvas with crossed ankles. He owned a Song Dynasty wooden statue of a similarly-posed bodhisattva, which he believed condensed the beauty of traditional Chinese culture and inspired his creativity. No matter what hardships he encountered during his life, this statue had always been among his most prized possessions.
The Expressiveness of Fauvism
Ting’s spontaneous, bright, and earthy yellow brushstrokes on this work symbolize the earth’s inclusiveness and vitality. Simple lines, as if carved with a knife, outline the bodhisattva silhouette, separating him from the background and cleverly adding a sense of depth to the picture so that it resembles a vivid, three-dimensional statue. In contradiction to traditional painting practices, Ting Yinyung changed the color of the contours form customary black to cobalt and applied orange paint on the bodhisattva’s body with heavy brushstrokes, achieving a contrasting and interactive final effect.
The bold and unrestrained expressionist spirit of fauvism, like the bold use of color in Matisse’s Indian Gesture, had a strong influence on Ting Yinyung’s style. As his retrospection of Chinese traditional culture progressed, he gradually refined his color palette and devoted more efforts to expressing the connotation of the colors themselves. While painting Bodhisattva, Ting used only three colors （orange, blue, and yellow）, but thanks to his keen perception of shades, he was able to achieve an unlimited dialogue between different hues and convey a strong visual impact.
The Culmination of Artistic Achievement
After arriving in Hong Kong in 1949, Ting Yinyung had created a large number of Chinese-style paintings, which gradually altered his former reputation of being an oil painter. However, during the 30 years he spent there, he never gave up oil painting and had continued to pursue improvement and self-innovation. Ting believed that while a prehistoric piece of art seems simple, it in fact contains all the seeds of today’s art language, the most primitive creativity, and the most complex expression of human emotion. He was deeply impressed by the exquisite Dunhuang Murals in China’s Gansu Province, and through his in-depth study of Chinese traditional culture, he gradually developed a firm mixture of the cultures of both the East and the West. To be precise, he combined his practical experiences accumulated in the fields of ink painting and stone carving with Western techniques he learned in his early years studying in Japan and the unrestrained and thick colors typical to fauvism. This fusion allowed for his post-1960s oil paintings to show his artistic boldness and emancipation, while at the same time preserving the unique and simple characteristics of traditional Chinese art. Bodhisattva, the subject of this auction, embodies Ting’s creative purpose of “utilizing Chinese art to present the beauty of modern art”.
In this work, Ting Yinyung transforms the more than one millennium old style of the Dunhuang Murals into a highly characteristic modern portrait. The full-bodied colors reflect the fervent and daring aesthetic approach of the Northern Wei Dynasty （368-534 CE） in Western China； the precise lines are well-defined and full of strength, just as the carved patterns on ancient pottery； and the bodhisattva silhouette shares common elements with figure paintings from the Eastern Jin Dynasty （317-420 CE） and the colored sculptures of the Tang Dynasty （618-907 CE）. This all shows Ting Yinyung’s unique artistic language existing in the contradictions and collisions between Eastern and Western paintings, and the three seemingly very different elements （color tension and passion of Western painting, the tranquility of the oriental Buddhist culture, and the simplicity and modesty of the Chinese nation） have all been fused under Ting’s brush into a sophisticated and graceful image of a bodhisattva.
Proof of An Addiction to Painting
Double-sided paintings appear quite often among Ting Yinyung’s few remaining oil paintings. According to one of his students, due to financial constraints, Ting often painted repeatedly either on the same piece of board or on the reverse side. One of the examples of such practice is Bodhisattva.
On the reverse side of the painting is a group of pictographs written by Ting with a large brush, which are an artistic rendition of primitive symbols created by the ancient Chinese. After finding the common grounds between archaic glyphs and modern abstract painting in the art of seal cutting, Ting utilized oil painting methods to display ancient seal script characters along with other symbols and glyphs, further embodying the revolutionary concept of fusing the ancient and the modern with both the East and the West.

Price estimate:
HKD: 4, 000, 000 - 6, 000, 000
USD: 512, 800 - 769, 200

Auction Result:
HKD: 4,720,000