Ink and colour on paper

48 x 49 cm.18 7/8x 19 1/4 in.

Signed titled，dated and signed in chinese；stamped with artist's seal on the upper left.
PROVENANCE Acquired from the artist;
Formerly The Property of Mr. Xu Yongxiang Collection;
(Mr. Xu Yongxiang, student of Guan Liang; Professor of Oil Painting Dept, Head of Teaching Researching Dept, Acadamic Dean from China Academy of Art and President of Zhe Jiang Art Research Institute.)

Guan Liang
1900-1986
Viewing from Guan Liang’s whole life, it can be said that Guan Liang is a genius artist. Guan Liang is different from other artists, he is from unskillful to skillful, then return from skillful to unskillful, so it can be said that he is a comprehensive convergence from having method to not having method. He not only paints color ink drama painting, and also paints oil painting, the both mutually enrich and nourish each other, so he has a unique meaning in the fields of Chinese and Western art and painting, his painting art has its own artistic ideas and exploring roads. As a true artist, he has won praise of numerous masters from both in traditional Chinese painting art and in western painting art.

The famous painter Mr. Shen Rou-Jian evaluated Mr. Guan Liang’s works as: “Quan’s paintings do not need a signature, because viewers can identify who the author is at a glance.” Viewing from the perspective of fine art history, Guan Liang did Shi Tao’s famous words: “I myself use my own method.” Here, the “I” marks originality and uniqueness, must have artistic mental perception and perseverant creativity, the wonderful point is freedom and innocence of the painting, in reading his paintings, it can be seen that the language in his paintings is very subtle, thus they are cute and intriguing.

“Imperial Concubine Getting Tipsy” is the most important theme expressed in Guan Liang’s drama figure paintings, and this work selected the famous plot “Gao Li-Shi Presents Wine to Yang Yu-Huan”. In the composition this work is very classic, it breaks traditional pattern, the Imperial Concubine and Gao Li-Shi “sit in equal footing”, although having servants serving wine, but making the Imperial Concubine become a “minion” of wine, the story precisely and powerfully adds the feasibility of the picture. The picture is expressed extremely vivid by triangular composition, and left a lot of whitespaces, showing a profound artistic brush and ink language. This work “White Water Beach” catches the famous classic Chinese Drama segment of Shiyilang’s mistakenly helped officers and men to grab Tiger Blue Face as theme, in the picture Shiyilang is “angry eyebrows raising to cap”, has resolute eyes, and holds his right fist high and hits to “the wanted”, while Tiger Blue Face also has angry eyebrows and clod eyes, he raises his left knee high with no sign of weakness, under Guan Liang’s brush Shiyilang’s brave and Tiger Blue Face’s resentment are expressed most vividly.

Like Chinese traditional painting art, Chinese classical drama attaches great importance to vividness and likeness, and values the handling of imagination and artistic conception as well as idea expression of picture. Under Guan Liang’ brush, the drama figure paintings have take and also have give-up, have refined brush ink artistic conception and also have exaggerated art modeling language expression; each of the figures seems full of energy, the picture has impassioned colors and is simple and neat, obviously absorbed the essence of traditional literati painting and nourishment of painting theories, becoming the most important feature in Guan Liang’s paintings.

Price estimate:
HKD：200,000 - 250,000
USD：25,800 - 32,300

Auction Result:
HKD: 713,000