Ink on paper

45.5 × 28.5 cm. 17 7/8 × 11 1/4 in.

LITERATURE
2014, Sanyu Catalogue Raisonné Drawings and Watercolors, Rita Wong, The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation, Taipei, p. 86, Plate No. D2019
PROVENANCE
Previous Collection of the family of art historian Chen Yen-Fon’s friend and French writer Michel Habart
Private Collection, Asia

The Treasures Reappear
Sanyu’s Free Spirit and Nostalgia

During his lifetime, Sanyu created 1,800 drawings, of which 1,635 were portraits. He uses the familiar Eastern paper and ink, charcoal and pencil to explore the unfamiliar Western human nude, tirelessly exploring his eternal human subjects and the glamour of Paris with his brush in the space of inches. In 2004, the Musée Guimet in Paris held an exhibition entitled Sanyu: l’écruiture du corps, which highlighted Sanyu’s historical status as an important member of the Paris School, as well as the artist’s diverse range of depicting human figures and its importance as a thread in Sanyu’s work.

The Legend Continues: The Habart Family’s Old Collection Appears

For the third time, Guardian Hong Kong is offering four masterpieces from the French family collection of Michel Habart and a sketch of a nude woman from the collection of the Parisian painting seller Jean Claude Riedel. Michel Abbott and Riedel were core collectors of Sanyu. With hundreds of drawings and 80 oil paintings in his collection, Riedel was an important confidant of Sanyu. This time, through their old collections, we will walk into the short but wonderful life of Sanyu with a different landscape on paper.

A Different Kind of Female Beauty: Sanyu’s Favorite Curly-Haired Powerful Model

Two of the artist’s most celebrated nude figures can be seen in the Habart collection: Seated Nude (Lot 68) and Back of the Nude (Lot 69), in which the main character in the painting are the same, with short curly hair, strong muscles and a fit body, which is different from the general aesthetics of slim women and reveals Sanyu’s own preference for the aesthetics of tall women in the West, who possesses strong self-confidence and strength of women of her time. The artist deliberately focuses the viewer’s attention on the woman’s face and body - her gaze is lowered, her legs are bowed, her toes are pointing to the ground, her bosom is generously exposed, and her body is in a stable triangular balance showing the strength of calm. The work echoes the words of Sinmay Zau: “We felt the heat of touch after seeing Sanyu’s nude sketches, knowing that there is a force of life here, like a living Rodin sculpture.”

In Back of the Nude, Sanyu takes the rare step of depicting the nude woman from a full-back angle, with the person in the painting in a half-kneeling position, revealing the muscles of her back and buttocks. Echoing Sanyu’s own words: “The power of simplicity is more infinite.” This body with a sense of strength may reveal the rise of women’s self-awareness at that time.

Glamour and Beauty in the Golden Age

Sanyu also makes the distinctive women he found in everyday life his model. An example of this is Lady Reading Newspaper (Lot 70) and Reclining Lady (Lot 67). The former shows a young woman reading a newspaper with her legs bent. The artist has deliberately adopted an elongated side view of the body to enhance the dramatic tension and to highlight the extremely relaxed and spacious posture of the figure. The back of the painting is a rare letter prefaced with the words “Monsieur, please allow me to...” in French and marked “December 20, 1928”, most likely in the artist’s handwriting. An unfinished letter marked with dates, which in particular gives rise to the imagination of Sanyu’s life at that time.

In Reclining Lady, Sanyu uses a brush dipped in ink and a carbon pen to paint. In this painting, a woman sitting alone in a corner is sketched out with flexible ink lines. She is shown with half a face, her eyes slightly closed as if she is preparing to take a nap and sleep soundly. Her hands crossed over her skirt, showing a slightly restrained posture. Underneath the hemline of the skirt, you can see plump calves overlapping. The fashionable blouse, half-skirt, and oxford shoes she wears show the fashion of the golden age in Paris. Throughout Sanyu’s sketches of people, they are mostly improvised and realistic, but rarely as detailed as this one, highlighting their preciousness.

Thighs of the Universe
In Reclining Nude (Lot 71) from the Riedel collection, Sanyu adds a touch of playfulness and intimacy to the work with a peek from the bottom up. The woman is in a dress, with one hand on her head and the other on her thigh, in a relaxed pose. In the lower part, her exaggeratedly enlarged legs and rounded toes face the viewer without any attempt to conceal them, giving her an unabashed and not lascivious appearance, which is a perfect example of what Sanyu’s friend Xu Zhimo described as “thighs of the universe”. The work’s special angle and deformation make the character’s face seemingly unreachable, like an unattainable moonlight flowing. Expressing Sanyu’s inner desire for love.
From Sichuan to Paris, Sanyu’s life has been a series of transitions, and he has transformed his inner waves into the scenery on paper. The work in front of us is still vivid and lively after nearly a century, which refers to the wordless nostalgia of the wanderer.

Price estimate:
HKD: 180,000 – 280,000
USD: 22,900 – 35,700

Auction Result:
HKD: 264,000