Ink and colour on paper

69 × 69 cm. 27 1/8 × 27 1/8 in.

Signed in Chinese with an artist’s seal on bottom left
PROVENANCE
Original Collection of Xi Suhua, disciple of Lin Fengmian
Acquired directly by the original collector in 1992 from the above
5 Oct 2013, Poly Hong Kong Autumn Auction, Lot 116
Acquired directly by previous important private Asian collector from the above
12 Oct 2021, China Guardian Hong Kong Autumn Auction, Lot 33
Acquired directly by present important private Asian collector from the above

Time Passes but the Homeland Remains the Same
Lin Fengmian’s Childhood Memories and Homesickness

Blending the Eastern and the Western, Seeking in All Directions

"An artist can only let his works speak for themselves."
——Lin Fengmian

Born in 1901 to a stonemason family, Lin Fengmian had a challenging childhood. Fortunately, he received love from his grandfather, fostering a simple, resilient, and fearless character. During high school, his art teacher, Liang Bocong, often gave him perfect scores of 120, planting the seeds for his future dedication to art. In the summer of 1919, he went to Europe under the guise of "working and studying diligently" and gained the favour of Yancesse, the dean of the ENSA Dijon Art & Design. Under Yancesse’s guidance, Lin officially embarked on a lifelong journey of blending Eastern and Western art. At the age of 26, Lin Fengmian was invited back to China to serve as the president of the National Beijing Art College (renamed as Central Academy of Fine Arts), becoming the youngest school president in the world. Over the decades, amid internal conflicts, wars, and departures from the fully dedicated National Hangzhou Academy of Art (currently named China Academy of Art), he focused on painting, away from worldly disputes. In the early 1960s, he held the Lin Fengmian Art Exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, showcasing his painting achievements over the past decade. The exhibition astonished the Beijing art community and created a sensation. During the Cultural Revolution, Lin destroyed nearly two thousand of his works himself. He moved to Hong Kong in 1977, using the remaining years of his life to express his feelings for his homeland through ink. As one of the founders of Chinese art, Lin Fengmian depicted the grand history of 20th-century Chinese art with his dramatic life and poetic paintings.

Reaching the Water’s End I Sit and Watch the Clouds Ascend

Clouds Over Homeland from the Spring auction represents his rare work from the golden era of the 1960s, featuring autumn mountain scenery. Reflecting on the tumultuous economic conditions he experienced in the 1950s and 1960s, Lin Fengmian settled in Shanghai for a period of peaceful solitude, devoting himself to creation. He traveled to various places for inspiration, including Tianping Mountain in Suzhou, the fishing grounds of Zhoushan, and Huangshan in Anhui. From then on, Lin Fengmian enjoyed depicting mountain and Autumn scenes in his paintings, boldly pioneering the alternating use of ink and wash, watercolour, and gouache. This practice made a historic contribution to the reform of Chinese painting. Using large areas of warm-toned wash, combined with layered contrasting colours, unique compositions, and simple brushstrokes, he created visual impacts and colour confrontations, revealing the dynamic life of nature. His works were both poetic and realistic, providing a refreshing perspective.

Mountain Stream, Timeless Gleam Drifting Clouds, Poetry’s Dream

For Lin Fengmian, "hometown" may have various flavours. He lost his mother there, received artistic enlightenment, his hometown carried the joys and sorrows of his growth. After returning from Europe, he rarely visited his hometown, stating, "I left many years ago, and it has been forty years since I last went back. However, the memories of my childhood are still vivid, like paintings that frequently appear in my mind, clear and distinct." Therefore, he often found solace in landscapes, letting everything dance in the wind, turning them into ink colours on paper to convey the poetic feelings for his hometown.

A Year’s Grace, Recall in Rhyme
Most Vivid in Hues of Orange, Yellow, and Lime

Clouds Over Homeland adopts Lin’s typical "square paper layout" with a flat composition. The three scenes are distinct, with a thick and layered bright yellow and light orange concentrated and compactly blended to depict the towering pine tree in the center of the painting. The clear and decisive ink outlines portray the vigorous branches. The scattered ink points depict the grassy lawn, the reflection of Autumn ripples on the nearby lake surface, and the lush trees in the distance, complemented by the ripples caused by the breeze and the gentle slope on the shore adorned with white dots. The blending of colour and ink emphasizes the contrast between the straight-lined trees and houses and the curved strokes depicting rustling leaves and ink-coloured clouds. This reveals Lin Fengmian’s unique skill, refined through years of sketching landscapes. He did not adhere to the Western art emphasis on light and dark perspective. He follows the principle of "borrowing without imitating" and skillfully uses lines to express light and shadow. His mastery in colour is evident, as he creates a tranquil and deep sky with shades of dark blue and ink green, gradually adding sand-white, and covering it with orange-yellow to portray the rich refraction changes and reflections. The interplay of geometric lines, the harmony of movement and stillness, and the use of contrasting colours in orange, yellow, and green demonstrate his skill in creating a tension-filled yet delicately detailed scene, full of memories of his hometown.

Collected by Disciples, Reproducing Lin’s Artistic Classics

Xi Suhua, the wife of renowned Chinese architect Feng Jizhong, and her husband met Lin Fengmian in the 1950s through mutual friends. Feng and Lin, sharing similar backgrounds, developed a deep friendship. Xi, having studied under Lin, became a close friend. During the turbulent decade, Xi risked being raided to send Lin clean clothes every month, even selling household possessions during difficult times just to provide her teacher with a warm winter coat. Their daughter, Feng Ye, also became Lin Fengmian’s goddaughter, leaving her biological parents to study painting with Lin in Hong Kong. She assisted him in daily life, providing Lin with support in his final ten years, showing the deep teacher-student relationship between the three. Clouds Over Homeland comes from Xi Suhua’s collection, embodying the warmth and camaraderie of Lin’s pre-Cultural Revolution friends and disciples, carrying the painter’s homesickness. The artwork was privately collected in the early 1990s and is now released again after thirty years, making it a rare find. The person has already passed away, but the scenery, like poetry, endures, allowing people to witness the stories and true emotions of the last century.

Price estimate:
HKD: 2,200,000 - 3,200,000
USD: 281,000 - 408,700

Auction Result:
HKD: 1,800,000