Lacquer on wood panel

100 × 100 cm. 39 3/8 × 39 3/8 in.

Signed in Chinese with an artist's stamp on bottom left
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Asia

Lacquered Dream, Understanding the World and Comprehending the Art
The Lacquer Painting of Yuan Yunfu, the Pioneer of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts

Yuan Yunfu has been teaching the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts for more than sixty years. In the history of modern Chinese art, he is a leader in both art creation and education, strengthening the harmony between Chinese and Western aesthetics. He was admitted to the Hangzhou National College of Art in 1949 and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1954. Since the establishment of the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts in 1965, he has been invited to teach there and was appointed as the dean of the Public Art Academy of the National Academy of Painting of China in 1999. He can be regarded as the mainstay of modern Chinese art history.

Mastered in Multi-Media Creation, Renowned in Chinese and Foreign Art Circles

Yuan engaged in the realm of pure art and public art, and his works can be seen in many iconic spaces, such as the mural of Bashan Shushui at Beijing Capital International Airport, the Light of Wisdom-Collection of Art of Past Dynasties and the 60-meter-long mural A Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River at Yanjing Hotel and Beijing Jianguo Hotel. Throughout his work, he successfully presented his strong spatial control and a cohesive thinking about Chinese thousand years art history. In 2013, the Golden Hall of the Great Hall of the People hung up the A Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River created by him and his son Yuan Jia, which witnessed the high recognition of his artistic achievements.
Yuan has diversified the development of Chinese and Western forms such as oil painting, watercolor, color ink, and murals. He is committed to leading the arts and crafts such as lacquer painting, murals, and tapestries to the field of pure art.

He went overseas for exchange programs in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1981, he held an ink painting exhibition at Wally Findlay Galleries in New York. In the 1990s, he frequently held exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Sweden, Hong Kong, Singapore and other places, bringing China's diverse art forms overseas.
Suzhou Humble Administrator's Garden presented at this auction is a rare and extraordinary lacquer painting. This work is created in his practice of combination of Chinese and Western art techniques, recording his pursuit and trial on art.

Lacquer Color Creates Rhyme, Ancient Meaning Emanates Fragrance

“The ancients had a profound study of the craftsmanship of lacquer and the artistic characteristics of lacquer, which is indeed a precious treasure that cannot be ignored in the development of modern lacquer art today.”
——Yuan Yunfu in Talking about Lacquer Painting

In the 7th National Art Exhibition in 1989, Yuan was hired by the Ministry of Culture and the Chinese Artists Association as the director of the mural and lacquer painting group. He even elaborated on the history of the development of lacquer art and its inspiration on the contemporary art creation with the article Talking about Lacquer Painting. Qiao Shiguang, the father of Chinese lacquer painting, who is also a professor at Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts, actively promoted the development of lacquer painting in the 1980s. Artists including Wu Guanzhong, Yuan, and others, joined lacquer painting creations one after another. Yuan selected some of his most proud works in the 1990s and then made them into lacquer paintings. One of them is presented in this auction, the rare and precious Suzhou Humble Administrator's Garden.

Born out of ancient lacquerware and based on traditional lacquer art, modern lacquer painting not only combines the beauty of craftsmanship and the elegance of material beauty, but also presents a richer modern artistic concept in terms of colors and themes. Suzhou Humble Administrator's Garden accurately retains the exquisite linear skills and color expression of Yuan's original ink painting, with green color as the main tone, supplemented by blue color blooming, presenting the visual tension of color from shallow to deep, layer by layer. In the composition, it flexibly demonstrates the large-scale atmosphere that Yuan admires. A large lake surface constitutes an imaginary breathing space, while the multi-dimensional courtyard landscapes in the near, middle, and far distances encapsulate the delicate and patchy characteristics of Qionglou in the painting.

The process of lacquer painting itself is complicated. After the first lacquer color is applied, it needs to be dried and then polished, and then sprinkled with powder; this process has to be repeated repeating this process continuously until the desired layered rhythm is formed. Therefore, how complicated the lacquer paintings is created is distinguished by how strong the color contrast is. Suzhou Humble Administrator's Garden presents a high degree of spatiality with similar colors, indicating that the difficulty of creation is rather high. The work uses eggshells as the material, inlays the courtyard stone bricks in the painting with the Raden method, and then sprinkles them with fine powder. Not only does the work ask for exquisite technique, but also shows the flexible and changeable creative form, illustrating artist's devoted artistic heart.

Price estimate:
HKD: 70,000 – 150,000
USD: 9,000 – 19,300

Auction Result:
HKD: 259,600