Ink and colour on paper

34.5 × 34.5 cm. × 8 13 5/8 × 13 5/8 in. × 8

Signed in Chinese with an artist’s stamp on bottom right (upper first and fourth pieces, lower second, third and fourth pieces)
Signed in Chinese with an artist’s stamp on bottom left (upper second and third pieces, lower first piece)

LITERATURE
1994, The Collected Works of Lin Feng Mian Vol. I, Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing, Tianjin, p. 23 (upper fourth piece)
1994, The Collected Works of Lin Feng Mian Vol. II, Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing, Tianjin, p. 13 (upper first piece)
2006, Christie's Hong Kong 20 Years Hong Kong: 20th Century Chinese Art Highlights, Asian Contemporary Art Highlights, Hong Kong, p. 50-51
PROVENANCE
23 Apr 2000, Christie's Taipei Spring Auction, Lot 12
Acquired directly by the present important private Asian collector from the above

“Shiy De-Jinn was the man of the time, who spoke out the words of the era. No plagiarism nor pursuit of fashion, he had always been an honest person and sincere painter, who deserved the name as a ‘true artist'.”
——Lin Fengmian

Looking back at the history of Chinese Art development, Shiy owned a unique position. As the description from his teacher, Lin Fengmian, he had been “a sincere painter” and had “spoken out the words of the era” all the way through his 38 years of artistic pursuit from his apprenticeship under Lin in 1943 at China Academy of Art(Hang Zhou) to his death out of pancreatic cancer in 1981. During his study at China Academy of Art(Hang Zhou), China Academy of Shiy received profound education and inspiration that had a vital influence on his life despite the tough teaching situation due to the war. For safety concern, the school moved from Hangzhou to the foot of a mountain in Chongqing. Local residence replaced teaching buildings while thatches and bamboo houses were substituted for classrooms. Although the facilities were inadequate, there were abundant high-qualified teachers, most of whom were top figures in the field of Modern Chinese Art at the time such as Guan Liang, Ting Yinyung, and fresh graduate, Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun. Poor in material life but rich in spiritual nourishment, those teachers offered many insights to students like Shiy.

Shiy had a strong passion for art. He was diligent, confident yet modest. Aiming at “becoming a revolutionist” to “draw a picture that represents the generation”, he gained remarkable success. He was admitted to Hangzhou Nation College as the first place where he was praised by Lin Fengmian and rated among his “five star pupil” together with Wu Guanzhong, Zao Wou-K, Chu Teh-Chun and Chao Chung-Hsiang. Shiy intended to inherit the responsibility of his teacher of reforming Chinese painting and to integrate the past to form a better future. He once said: “I shall draw of which others dare not, because a simply beautiful painting is far not enough. We need to draw a new path.” His words were evidence of his unique character and sublime artistic pursuit.

In the second year after he graduated from China Academy of Art(Hang Zhou), Shiy went to Taiwan in 1948. Since then, Taiwan became his second hometown. In his early creations, against the prevailing trend of Chinese ink painting that was used by most of the artists at the time, Shiy adopted western watercolour, which was rarely the common method of his peers. However, instead of abandoning Chinese culture, he combined the varied level of ink, the modest and contained mentality towards life and the philosophical thoughts into his artworks. He never imitated predecessors but established his unique style based on where he had gone and what he had seen and felt. From 1958 to 1968, he responded to the expressionism wave in late 1950s brought by the West. In his later years, he demonstrated significant talent in calligraphy and ink painting. Also, he travelled around the world. In 1962, 39-years-old Shiy was invited by the US State Department to hold an exhibition at the United State's Information Service Center due to his outstanding artistic achievement. In the next 4 years, he travelled around America and Europe, experiencing Western culture as well as visiting many Chinese artists who stayed abroad. He turned his observation of contemporary Chinese artist into words and wrote down the books “Into the European and American Art Scene: Shiy De-jinn” and “Contemporary Chinese Painter Ling Fengmian” to promote art. He also declared his support in the public to “Fifth Moon Society” and “Tong Fang Painting Association”, two art groups that promoted abstract art form, which was established by young artists and received much criticism in the relatively conservative environment at the time.

Today was the 40th anniversary of the death of Shiy De-Jinn. In this special episode, we hope we could gather his works from all periods and associate them with the masterpieces from his teachers and peers so that we could memorize the stormy “Golden Age” when the pursuit for art is pure and ambitious. And hereby, we salute our beloved artist. Just as the poem written by Shiy: “turn our lives, into kindling, let it burn, burn into a flame, the light of a sudden, heap up dancing spark, run, and run into the sky”. The artistic light that the artists' lives and efforts were dedicated to shall burst in the night sky forever. Silently but brightly, illuminates the hearts of us all.


Breaking Cocoon Into Butterfly
The Treasure of the Grand Master Lin Fengmian

On September 21, 1997, the inauguration of Lin Fengmian's painting exhibition took place in Paris, where he received critical acclaim 50 years ago. The director of the Cernuschi Museum wrote in the preface of the exhibition catalogue, “For half a century, of all the Chinese painters, Lin Fengmian has made the greatest contribution to Western techniques. Since 1928, he has believed that he must devote himself to integrating the ideals of the East and the West into harmony.” As the youngest president of China Academy of Art, Lin Fengmian, who has always adhered to his artistic ideals in loneliness, finally stood under the spotlight at the center of the world art scene and accepted his well-deserved glory.

The Grand Master of Chinese Modern Art: Shiy De-Jinn's View of Lin Fengmian
After returning from Brazil in 1978, Lin Fengmian settled down in Hong Kong and devoted most of his time to painting. The following summer, Shiy De-Jinn, a student of his from Hangzhou National Academy of Art, came to visit. They were excited to see each other and chatted about painting, life and ideals——these moments became one of the few highlights in Lin Fengmian's lonely senior life. In Autumn of the same year, Shiy De-Jinn published the book Lin Fengmian The Pioneer Reformer of Chinese Painting, highly appraising the significance of Lin Fengmian in the history of modern Chinese art. This book became the earliest publication to introduce Lin Fengmian and his artworks to Taiwan. Pictures of gentle court ladies took up most of the pages. Since then, Lin Fengmian's paintings began to appear in exhibitions in Paris, Japan, Shanghai, and Taipei and he was hailed as the “grand master of modern Chinese art”.


Neo-play of the Traditional Rhythm the Swansong of His Peak Time
Eight Beauties: The Very Best of Lin Fengmian's Belle Paintings
Tracing back Lin Fengmian's artistic development, the belle paintings he created since the 1940s are key to the formation of his artistic style. In 1951, Lin Fengmian bid farewell to Hangzhou and lived alone in Shanghai. During this valuable period of peaceful time, he has delved into the pursuit of “harmonizing the Eastern and the Western ideals” and entered a period of utmost creative power. Lin's 15 years in Shanghai (from 1951 to 1965) was regarded as the “golden age” of his artistic creation. Many of Lin's masterpieces were completed during this period, but nearly all of them were destroyed during the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution. Eight Beauties come from Lin's surviving masterpieces of the “golden age” from 1940s to 1960s, which fully embody his innovation of Chinese painting from form, color to the spiritual core and vividly demonstrate his life-long artistic pursuit of harmonizing the Chinese and Western ideals. They are the representative pieces of Lin's belle paintings and similar works can only be seen at Shanghai Art Museum. On the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Christie, Eight Beauties stood out from other auctioned works and were included in the special collection catalogue. In addition, two of the works were also included in the Complete Works of Lin Fengmian. Eight Beauties are no doubt the best choice for Lin's figure painting collection.

Distilled from Both the East and the West, Enchanting Figures with High Morals
In the pictures, eight beauties either sit down or stand up. They all have oval faces, trimming eyebrows, sculptural noses, phoenix eyes, tiny mouths and thin lips. The seemingly unified portrayal of female figures in fact embodies the “ideal woman” image in Chinese classical literature. These characters are elegant yet steeped in the characteristics of folk art, which makes them surprisingly amicable. The face, neck, and hands of the ladies are deliberately painted in cool colors, especially the dark color of their faces. It is obvious that when painting these characters, Lin Fengmian took inspiration from Dunhuang frescoes. By diluting the depiction of the skin, Lin has strengthened the expression of emotion of the characters. The ladies are in varied postures, displaying the signature images of Lin Fengmian's belle paintings. Some lady is looking at herself in the mirror, some is playing guqin, some is reading a book, and the other is holding a fan: all of the characters are quiet and charming, gentle and elegant.

Lin Fengmian didn't spend much time on the details of the characters. He used his unique fine brush to outline the protagonists' beautiful body contour with light ink, adding a touch of softness and grace to the picture. Meanwhile, he made use of the white space in Chinese painting, overlaying white lines and white powder in the areas such as cuffs and necklines, on top of heavy colors to form shiny yet soft texture, like that of the ancient Song porcelain. This method of adding fine white lines to control the changes in light and shades first appeared in Lin's belle paintings in this period, which perfectly embodied Lin Fengmian's artistic concept of absorbing the best of both the East and the West and has become one of his most prominent features. Immersed in the artist's sentiment, the flowing lines lead the color blocks in the paintings, from the lines to the surface, from the entity to the empty space, artfully integrating the oriental aesthetics into the western paradigm.

Comparing the ladies in Lin's paintings with the slender women in Amedeo Modigliani's paintings, although both possess the characteristics of slenderness and beauty, the figures outlined by Lin are more concise and refined. Lin has used oil painting techniques to stack color clocks, creating a sense of volume for the figures, which makes them ethereal in temperament but well-grounded in presentation. The streamlined forms demonstrate Lin Fengmian's pursuit of shape and rhythm, giving the characters unique charm and sentiment, similar to those female figures in East Jin's famous painting Admonitions to the Instructress to the Court Ladies, thus cementing the classical images of gentle yet intellectual oriental beauties into the paintings.

The background of painting further reflects the fruition of Lin Fengmian's artistic exploration. Different from traditional Chinese paintings which only show the volume of the objects and the presence of light through the brushing techniques and the intensity of ink, the artist uses a large area of ink to divide the background longitudinally into blocks with varied light and shades. The large area of the blank space in the center has created a “backlight” scenario in the painting, highlighting the protagonists while increasing the depth of the space. The elegant and hazy background is contrasted with the clear face and affirmative eyebrows of the ladies, further establishing a spatial rhythm in the limited space.

To Express Sentiment and Ideals, Beautiful Ladies with Noble Temperament
“The most important thing in belle painting is to acknowledge ceramic art from China... I took inspiration and technology from ceramic art, the purity of transparent color and the elegant style--this is the aesthetics of Song.”
——Lin Fengmian

Different from the common rich colors in larger belle paintings, Lin only uses light colors in Eight Beauties, which makes the figures more elegant and graceful. For example, in the piece where the lady is playing guqin, her dark brown dress is contrasted with her water blue colored hair veil. The two-lady piece on the right has a clear presentation, but full of hidden changes in light and shades, creating a hint of detachment, portraying women with noble characters, like the lotus which is born out of the mud but unstained. In the picture above, the lady's lean shoulders and slim torso echo the slender shape of the porcelain vase in the background, which also implies the poetic connotation of “a beauty is like a flower, but flower-like beauty is perishable and hard to sustain.”

Belle painting is not just about capturing the beautiful looks of ladies, but to portray the inner beauty of these characters. Just like Qu Yuan who uses fragrant grass to symbolize the temperament of elegance, purity, and steadfastness, Lin Fengmian attempts not only to present the adorable female figures, but also to preserve their symbolic fine temperament on paper. Notably, Lin Fengmian's belle paintings focus on establishing the image of an elegant intellectual beauty. The elegant female images point to independent thinking and confident mindset, which allows them to be calm in times of low ebbs and difficulties and always waiting for the good news of life in grace. This not only contains Lin Fengmian's spiritual beliefs, but also entrusts his encouragement and admonishment to himself and to his followers at the time, a very meaningful and special artwork.

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,500,000 – 2,500,000
USD: 193,400 – 322,400

Auction Result:
HKD: 7,740,000