Ink and colour on paper

69 × 69.7 cm. 27 1/8 x 27 1/2 in.

Signed in Chinese with one artist's seal on bottom left
LITERATURE
1999, Lin Fengmian – Leader of Chinese Modernism Art, Canada Asia Pacific International Art Consultants Ltd, Taipei, p.145

PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

The Time was Behind Him
Lin Fengmian's Artistic Innovation
“This century has entered the last decade, and art around the world has undergone tremendous changes. But the issues that we discussed sixty or seventy years ago are still our problems today.” This is how Lin Fengmian summed up his life in 1990.
The problem he is referring to is how to “learn from Western art, remove the shortcomings of Chinese painting, open up to the aesthetics and expressionism of modernist art with personal characteristics, and create a new art that belongs to the new era.” Of course, this is also the artistic concept Lin tried to realize his entire life.
A Pioneer for Blending Chinese and Western Art
In 1919, Lin Fengmian, his classmate Lin Wenzheng, Sanyu, Xu Beihong, Pan Yuliang, and others became the first group of Chinese students to study art in France. In 1925, at the age of 25, he returned to China to serve as the president of the National Art School in Beiping （today's Beijing）. He then founded the National Hangzhou Academy of Art and proposed the idea of blending the best of both East and West. He cultivated outstanding students such as Wu Guanzhong, Zao Wou-Ki, and Chu The-Chun, who would later become important figures in the history of modern and contemporary Chinese art. In 1937, when the second Sino-Japanese War broke out, Lin Fengmian moved to Hangzhou, moving from oil painting to exploring innovations in ink painting and pioneering paintings on paper with ink and gouache pigments, forming his signature style.
In 1951, Lin left Hangzhou to live in Shanghai. At that time, he was immersed in creation. Although he was poor and lonely, his artistic ideals were not weakened at all； he was still relentlessly creating and making breakthroughs in transforming traditional Chinese literati painting. By absorbing Chinese folk art and modern Western art language, he created a new visual image of traditional literati painting, forming a distinct personal style and pushing Chinese painting from tradition to modernity. The portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and other works he created have thus become a milestone in the history of Chinese art in the 20th century.
Three Classic Themes from the 50s and 60s
During the auction this autumn, Guardian Hong Kong will continue the artistic spirit of this spring's auction of Lin Fengmian's works and once again present three precious paintings from the peak of his creations during the 1950s and 60s. The three works debuting in the auction market have been passed among collectors for decades, a truly marvelous opportunity for buyers!
Creative Cubist Composition
Cactus, Painted Pottery and Still Life
Created in 1952, Cactus, Painted Pottery and Still Life is one of the few early still life paintings of Lin Fengmian's extant work that can be chronologically dated. It is also the keymost result of his avid experiments with cubist expression during the early 1950s, marking a new stage of his innovation in Chinese ink painting.
In the background, the artist uses horizontal and vertical lines to form walls, windows, and window frames. A large circle fills the entire picture as an outline of a round table. An inverted trapezoid is placed on the left half of the round table, various abstract versions of everyday items staggered upon it. The fruit in the lower part of the picture and the cactus in the upper are placed close to the center axis. The rhomboid pottery pieces on the left and the rectangular ones on the right are arranged horizontally, and the circularly distributed pottery, cactus, potted plants, and fruits all surround a handkerchief in the middle, forming a layout of “squares in the circle and circles in the square”.
The cactus, handkerchief, and fruits are all green and yellow and therefore mutually responsive. The white sky outside the window in the upper left corner, the black tabletop in the lower right corner, the bright white gauze curtain in the lower left corner, and the brown wall in the upper right corner also form a contrast between light and dark. The white background harmonizes with the overall grayish tone, and the white clouds in the sky outside the window add a sense of space to the picture so that the viewer cannot help but imagine what is outside.
The Soul of Chinese Painting, the Colors of Western Painting
In the 1930s, Lin Fengmian studied cubist artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. For him, cubism was the mainstream of modern Western art. After relocating to Shanghai in the 1950s, Lin, inspired by the reforming of traditional Shaoxing Opera, decided to modernize traditional Chinese painting by adding cubist expression techniques. （Chinese traditional painting pays extra attention to the temporal expression of subjective feelings, somewhat resulting in a lack of spatial tension.） Starting with still life and transforming the depth of a three-dimensional space into a superposition of individual objects on a single plane, through the precise layout of geometric shapes and the use of gouache pigments and inks, the elegant characteristics in traditional Chinese still life painting have all but disappeared and have been replaced with a complex and intertwined geometric order.
Returning to Cactus, Painted Pottery and Still Life, one can notice that each object is ingeniously arranged, whether in terms of contrasting colors or the static and dynamic opposition formed by the square/circular composition of the painting. Thanks to the static representation of dynamics, the vigorous vitality of this picture is all too clear.
The Enthusiasm of Chinese and Western Aesthetics
Lady in White
Despite withdrawing from education, in the 1950s, Lin Fengmian entered the peak period of his artistic creation. Female portrait painting was his most popular theme of the time, and the 1954 Lady in White is a prime example. With splendidly skillful technique, the artist captures the beauty and elegant posture of an oriental woman while still maintaining her lovely grace and poise.
Lady in White's “square composition” is typical of Lin Fengmian. Wide, black, and white brushstrokes divide the background into three equal parts, with visible changes between light and dark. The smooth lines and translucent shadows in the background give the picture a backlighting setting, emphasizing the tranquility and softness of the woman in the foreground. The flowing lines and the ingenious treatment of color reflect the artist's longing for his loved ones while still enveloping the woman's enchanting posture and lightness of her dress's tulle. This exhibits Lin's refinement regarding his full understanding of the characters, for without it, forming the mature and confident artistic language of the painting would not have been possible.
In terms of color, Lady in White shows one of the most prominent features of Lin Fengmian's portraits of women in traditional clothing created during that time: the use of white. His technique he developed on his own. As he covered heavy color with white lines and white powder to form the texture of translucent gauze, he thereby formed a soft and transparent halo, resembling Song Dynasty porcelain. The varying intensity of the white powder overlay produces lavish midtones. Here, the perfect combination of skill and inspiration is a result of Lin Fengmian's precise control of pigments and a thorough understanding of the aesthetic essence of Chinese traditional culture.
Exquisite Technique and a Simple Picture
Lady in White shows Lin Fengmian's love, understanding, and aesthetic perception of Chinese traditional culture. For example, he took inspiration from Chinese Buddhist statues, the Dunhuang murals, and Peking Opera, and merged them all with the simple shapes of Western cubism. The woman he painted is as slim and feminine as those featured on paintings by Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani, but the geometric shapes of Lin's protagonist are even more concise. With Western oil painting techniques, Lin was able to accumulate ink and create a three-dimensional sense of character just as seen in the West, yet he preserved an ethereal atmosphere and managed not to break its thickness.
New Lyrical Style of the East
Ospreys
The beautiful scenery of Meixian, Lin's hometown in Guangdong Province, has cultivated the artist's appreciation and closeness to nature. Since the late 1950s, he has turned his gaze to nature in a broader sense. In 1958, together with Guan Liang, Wu Dayu, and other senior painters, he visited sites such as Huangshan in Anhui Province, Dongshan near Suzhou, Zhoushan in Zhejiang Province, and Xin'an Rive, where he made numerous sketches and accumulated a great many inspirations for his paintings. Ospreys （1960） is based on one of these sketches and was one creation that Lin was particularly proud of.
The Landscapes round Us
Lin used different shades of ink to paint the river, mountains, and sky in the background, while in the foreground, he used straight lines and smudge techniques to create an abstract, triangular structure of two fishing boats placed in the center of the image. The intertwined rice plants, visible at both ends of the boats, give the picture visual stability and a feeling of spatial depth, but the three differently shaped ospreys deliberately placed on the right side break the original balance and form an illusion of sinking to the right. Lin Fengmian, inspired by the spatial composition of Western landscape paintings, divided the picture into multiple levels and deliberately left certain parts blank （a technique commonly used in traditional ink painting） to capture the changes of outdoor light and shadow. When viewers gradually turn their gaze from the nearby boats toward the distant landscape, they can feel a free and relaxed atmosphere made possible by the work's refreshing style.
Although no details of the ospreys on the right are visible, they seem full of life, the concise brushwork vigorous and beautiful, revealing Lin's refined yet still childlike heart. The work seems an accurate portrayal of his mood upon the time of creation: even though he had experienced war and hardship, he managed to hold onto a pure heart that remained open to nature and art.
Lin Fengmian took Chinese local culture and blended it with Western elements, finding a way to “adapt the formal language to the spiritual needs of the new era.” Thanks to his forward-thinking, he was able to predict the direction of art development and worked hard to put Chinese painting on the tracks of modernist innovation. While admiring his classic works and rereading his self-stated personal life summary, one cannot help but sigh upon discovering how far ahead of his era he most certainly was.

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,500,000 - 2,500,000
USD: 191,100 - 318,500

Auction Result:
HKD : 4,130,000