Oil on board

35 x 46 cm. 13 3/4 x 18 1/8 in.

Signed in English and dated on upper left
PROVENANCE
Hung YukYung, a disciple of Ting Yinyung from Guangdong, acquired directly from the artist
Private Collection, Asia

Note: An oil painting of flower painted by Hung Yukyung, first female disciple of Ting Yinyung, is on the reverse of this painting, demonstrating the deep affiliation between Ting and his disciple
This work will be included in the Ting Yinyung Catalogue Raisonné: Oil Paintings prepared by Rita Wong

Modern Rendering of Prehistoric Art
A Precious Collection of Oil Paintings by Ting Yinyung in the 60s

Ting Yin-yung left mainland in 1949 for Hong Kong, where he lived a down and out life but never ceased to paint. He changed his first name to “Hung”, which means a wild goose fleeing south alone, and deliberated in his creation process how oil paintings and watercolours were connected with Chinese traditional ink art, calligraphy and epigraphy. He interpreted the cultural connotations of Chinese artworks in the spirit of Fauvism, which helped him reach the height of his career.

Ting produced less than 300 oil paintings throughout his life. This autumn auction puts up for bid two representative pieces created in his prime. The subject matters are pictorial characters and still life respectively, manifesting Ting's artistic attainments in fusing occidental and oriental elements across a broad historical timeframe.

Less is More: the Art of Leaving Blank
Hong Hu IV: A Self-portrait in Chinese Characters
Hong Hu IV (Lot77) was born in the 60s when Ting already moved to Hong Kong. In 1969, he handpicked the present work and two other contemporaneous paintings to be published as his iconic works in the 60s on Cosmorama Pictorial in the same year. He also invited Prof. Pierre Ryckmans, an established Belgian sinologist and literary critic, for an op-ed article. Ryckmans, who is better known by his pen name Simon Leys, visited China for the first time in 1955. Fascinated by Chinese culture, he moved to Hong Kong, where he studied Chinese language and art in New Asia College (now the Chinese University of Hong Kong) and got to know Ting who was then a faculty member. Ryckmans was impressed by his paintings, which combined the essence of the East and the West, and became one of his most important supporters in Hong Kong. In his column commentary, Ryckmans referred to Western composition theories and named the piece Love, personifying the two characters into a loving couple. His interpretation showed how the complementary and mutually reinforcing Chinese characters helped bring out the rich connotations of Ting's work.

This piece qualifies as a Ting's self-portrait in two Chinese pictorial characters, which refer to Ting's first name and his zodiac sign respectively. Compared with the other three paintings in the series, this one's layout is best planned and most interesting. He used scarlet ink to outline the two characters in the forms of a goose and a tiger with one vigorous stroke. This technique is associated with the philosophy of leaving blank in seal carving, reflecting Ting's ever-improving skill in incorporating calligraphy into his creation. The cinnabar ink and the ivory-coloured mottled texture remind viewers of inscriptions on tortoise shells in ancient times, making the seemingly artless outlines full of artistic appeal and making this the best piece in the series.

Colourful Autumn as a Season of Harvest
Corn and Crab: Formerly Collected by Ting's First Student in Hong Kong
Created in the 60s, Corn and Crab (Lot 76) was formerly collected by Ms. Hung Yuk-ying, the first student of Ting in Hong Kong who had been studying oil painting with him since the 60s. At the back of the board, she imitated Ting's brushwork and painted potted flowers to commemorate the close relationship between them. Ting managed to present a distinctive day-to-day setting with bright colours, bold yet creative composition and rustic figures. The crab signifies the highest score a candidate can make in the Imperial Exam. The painting has a tint of Cezanne's expressionist still life paintings, as the dark green crab looking around in the plate stands in interesting contrast to the red peppers next to it. This is the only piece of Ting's rather small collection that includes corn, which by no means a sought-after object by artists. Words are not needed to prove its rarity. The plump-eared corn in bright yellow implies the harvest season in autumn and together with the crab on its right signifies wealth and prosperity.

Ting creatively integrated the practice of leaving blank in ink art into his oil painting. He drew out distinct outlines of the corn, the plate and the crab to create delicate distance between them. While retaining the original shapes of the objects, he also managed to generate incredibly painterly effect. Corn and Crab does not reproduce the physical shapes of the objects as honestly as Cezanne's still life works, but its pure rendering of colour adds to the vitality of the piece. This is also an example that shows Chinese artists' exceptional mindfulness of passing down cultural legacy in their own ways in an artistic world where East meets West.

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,250,000 – 1,850,000
USD: 159,400 – 235,900

Auction Result:
HKD: 2,183,000