Description: This is an epic and historically Important RARE Fine Antique Asian Chinese MING Dynasty Scroll Painting, Ink and color on Silk or Paper, ATTRIBUTED to Chinese Ming Dynasty painter, Chen Hongshou 陳洪綬 (1598 - 1652,) or his son, the artist known as Chen Zi (1634 - 1711.) THIS PAINTING MAY HAVE BEEN PAINTED BY ANOTHER LATE MING - EARLY QING DYNASTY PAINTER. PLEASE LOOK UP THE DEFINITION OF THE WORD ATTRIBUTION IF YOU DO NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF THIS WORD. (此画可能为另一位明清初画家所画。如果您不知道该词的含义，请查阅该词归属的定义.) This large and monumental piece depicts a magnificent and highly detailed outdoor landscape scene, with gnarled ancient trees, forested sylvan woodlands, and multitudes of robed noblemen and women playing board games, strumming stringed instruments, or enjoying the bucolic outdoor scenery in the company of friends and community members. Archaistic bronze vessels can be seen on a small wooden table, and the expressive faces and mannerisms of each figure reflect the hand of a highly talented ancient Chinese painter. Signed with a faded and illegible red ink chop-mark in the lower right corner (Photo 20.) Additionally, this artwork bears several labels affixed to the verso, which read: "明代陈洪绶设色西雅图集." This translates from Mandarin Chinese as: "Ming Dynasty Chen Hongshou's colors from Seattle collection." Approximately 32 1/4 x 69 3/4 inches (including frame.) Actual visible artwork is approximately 27 1/2 x 64 3/4 inches. Good condition for centuries of age, with some mild wear and material loss throughout the painted surface (please see photos.) This is a very large piece, and due to its size and weight, it will have to be shipped via UPS Freight or Picked Up Locally from Los Angeles County, California. If you are seriously interested, please contact me for a S&H quote prior to purchase. I WILL NOT SHIP THIS TO ASIA, OR OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES! I have had to re-list this painting over three times due to Mainland Chinese buyers not reading my listing carefully. This museum-worthy and astounding artwork is Priced to Sell. Acquired from an affluent old Asian art collection in Los Angeles, California. If you like what you see, I encourage you to make an Offer. Please check out my other listings for more wonderful and unique artworks! About Chen Hongshou: Chen Hongshou (1598 Zhuji, Zhejiang province –1652), formerly romanized as Ch'en Hung-shou, was a Chinese painter of the late Ming dynasty. Chen was born in Zhuji, Zhejiang province in 1598, during the Ming dynasty. His courtesy name was Zhanghou (章侯), and his pseudonyms were Laolian (老莲), Fuchi (弗迟), Yunmenseng (云门僧), Huichi (悔迟), Chiheshang (迟和尚) and Huiseng (悔僧). He once trained under Lan Ying, and was skilled in painting peculiar human figures, landscapes, flower-and-bird. He utilized plump, profound brushwork and precise color, creating a unique style. He always painted illustrations and made tapestry portraits. His two masterpieces, Shui Hu Ye Zi (水浒叶子) and Bo Gu Ye Zi, were the rare examples among the Ming and the Qing dynasties. He was very famous at that time, called "Chen in South and Cui in North", together with Cui Zizhong. He also was skilled in calligraphy, poetry and prose. At the age of 9, Chen's father died, but his uncle ensured his education. In 1645, he passed the government examinations, receiving official status, only to flee from the advancing Manchus. In 1646, he became a Buddhist monk; although he struggled in the sometimes conflicting ideals of Buddhist retirement and Confucian government service. His works are kept in museums and galleries all over the world including these in the United States:Returning Home Honolulu Museum of ArtFlowers & Bird (Xi Shang Mei Shao) Metropolitan Museum of ArtImmortals Celebrating a Birthday Indianapolis Museum of ArtLady Xuanwen Jun Giving Instructions on the Classics Cleveland Museum of ArtMaster Laozi on the Back of Ox Cleveland Museum of ArtThe Mountain of the Five Cataracts Cleveland Museum of ArtThe Dragon King Revering the Buddha Freer Gallery of Art Chen Hongshou - Chinese artist Chen Hongshou (born 1599, Zhuji, Zhejiang province, China—died 1652) was a Chinese artist noted for his curious, masterfully executed paintings of ancient personalities. His works suggest the disquiet of the artist caught between the decline of the Ming dynasty and the conquest of the foreign Manchus, who established the Qing dynasty. Chen’s father died when the boy was nine, but his uncle ensured his scholarly education. After twice failing the government examinations, he achieved official status in 1645, only to have to flee before the advancing Manchus. He became a Buddhist monk in 1646 but was torn between the conflicting ideals of Confucian government service and Buddhist retirement. His paintings suggest something of those tensions in dealing with ancient subjects and figure styles; indeed, Chen gave a brief but vigorous new life and dignity to the art of figure painting that had been in limbo since the Song dynasty (960–1279). He sought the quality of his figure subjects rather than their absolute likeness. His highly finished paintings combine elegant line with decorative colour, and his figures have attenuated faces and exaggerated, curvilinear drapery. Chen Hongshou Chen Hongshou (陳洪綬, 1599–1652), courtesy name Zhanghou (章侯) and sobriquet Laolian (老蓮, “old lotus”), was a native of Zhuji (諸暨) in Zhejiang. After the fall of the Ming, he took the sobriquets Huichi (悔遲), Wuchi (勿遲), and Yunmen Seng (雲門僧). Chen Hongshou excelled in painting and calligraphy. He became a Buddhist monk in 1646 but was torn between the conflicting ideals of Confucian government service and Buddhist retirement. His paintings suggest something of those tensions in dealing with ancient subjects and figure styles; indeed, Chen gave a brief but vigorous new life and dignity to the art of figure painting that had been in limbo since the Song dynasty (960–1279). Chen Hongshou specialized in figures, but he was also gifted at other subjects, including birds-and-flowers, grasses-and-insects, and landscapes. In figure painting, he sought the quality of his figure subjects rather than their absolute likeness. Chen Hongshou often used solid forms and curvilinear drapery lines, revealing the features of Li Gonglin’s (1049–1106) and Zhao Mengfu’s (1254–1322) styles. However, his manner was often exaggerated, and he became known as one of the “transformation” artists of the late Ming. He also did illustrations for woodblock printing, making a major contribution to the art of woodblock illustration in the late Ming The year 1589 marked the beginning of the Ming dynasty’s death rattle. Halfway through his reign, the Wan Li Emperor’s (1573-1620) most able minister, Zhang Zhuzheng, died and the Emperor, long chafed by him, indignantly refused to carry out his imperial duties and from 1589 to 1613 never attended imperial audiences, ceased to perform public ceremonies and even refused to attend his own mother’s funeral. With this vacuum at the centre of power, the country quickly descended into crisis from lack of direction; this chaos was exacerbated by increasingly destructive raids from the Manchu on China’s northern border. What with rebellions springing up in the countryside, China was rapidly approaching a complete standstill. Chen Hongshou (1599-1652) was one of the most influential artists towards the end of the great Ming dynasty and into the first decade of the Manchu Qing dynasty. China Descends into ChaosThe next emperor, Taichang, only ruled for a month and he was followed by Tianqi (1621-1627), who was a completely useless figure. He was succeeded by his younger brother, Chongzhen (1628-1644), the last Ming emperor. During his brief reign, China descended into a state of total chaos and terror, and as Manchu forces broke through the gates of the Forbidden City, he committed suicide by hanging himself from a locust tree on a hill on the northern side of the palace grounds. The Manchu were a nomadic society considered culturally, socially and morally inferior in the eyes of the Han Chinese. Chen Hongshou’s opus straddles the period from approximately 1615 through to his death in 1652, all covered in this rare exhibition, the first of its kind in North America. It contains paintings from Berkeley’s own collection, private international collections, works from American museums and works from the Shanghai Museum that have never been exhibited in the United States. Intellectual Resistance to the QingIntellectual resistance to the Qing continued until the end of the 17th century by a large coterie of Ming loyalist scholars, officials, and artists who took their protests, not to the streets, but to the painting table. These respected and sometimes eccentric painters whose works always contained ever-so-subtle resistance to the Ming, included Hongren, Bada Shanren, Daoji, Wang Hui, Zhu Da, Wang Shimen and others. Paintings by them dominated Alternate Dreams, 17th Century Chinese Paintings from the Tsao Family Collection, a Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition, reviewed in Asian Art Newspaper’s September 2016 issue. This issue can be bought online. Throughout his entire life, Chen Hongshou was living in a nation that was slowly but inexorably crumbling and when the Ming fell in 1644, he, like the later Bada Shanren, became a monk for a short time to ensure his safely and it was there that he adopted the sobriquet of ‘Repentant Monk’. Some of his early works are almost melancholic and the destruction of his beloved Han Chinese culture to barbarians left a lasting impression on him which haunted both his mind and his brush for the rest of his life. Chun Hongshou’s Disillusionment in LifeThis haunting, combined with a disillusionment in life and the ‘system’, which denied him an official position, pushed him into a dissolute life. In his painting, however, he often conjured quirks from his fountainhead of creativity such as peculiarity, sly humour and the depiction elements of nature in forms never created by nature. Nothing escaped his eye – three of the Five Elements, stone, water and wood as well as human physiognomy. He has not actually been called eccentric per se, peculiar perhaps, but eccentricity, or its synonyms – odd, strange, abnormal, quirky, whimsical, off-centre, and unconventional – all certainly apply to Chen Hongshou. Albums in the Style of the Ancient Masters by Chen HongshouHe created a number of albums, several of which were works in the style of the ‘ancient masters’, and these include delicate depictions of a bird on a branch, very much in the style of Northern Song paintings for flat fans, an example of which from 1630-1632, is a 10-fold album in the exhibition from the Shanghai Museum, as well as the 10-fold circa 1650 album from Cleveland. He was fond of depicting groups, for example, Su Wu and Li Ling with Attendants (circa 1635 from Berkeley), A Scholar Instructing Girl Pupils in the Arts (1649, also from Berkeley), Immortals Gathering (1649, from Indianapolis) and Li Bai’s Night Revel in Peach and Plum Garden (1650, from Boston). Eccentric Physiognomy in Scroll PaintingsThese scrolls depict the artist’s penchant for eccentric physiognomy in which the faces themselves, especially the men, are often depicted with elongated jaws, almost like a skull deformity. Women are sometimes depicted with very slightly elongated jaws, but there is one example in the exhibition which stands out as a major facial distortion. An Elegant Gathering, a 1646-1647 black ink handscroll from Shanghai has as a frontispiece, a black ink, fine line image of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara/Guanyin as the Water Moon Guanyin, holding a kalasa and with an unusual diadem, dressed in elegant robes and backed by a glorious nimbus. Instead of having a beautiful face, this image looks like an over-the-hill boxer who has been pummelled far too many times. Why? Only the artist could have answered. Chen Hongshou’s Fan PaintingsHis fan paintings, of which there are two in the exhibition, do not exhibit signs of eccentricity, at first glance, except for the fact that the ancient trees are usually depicted with some extremely bold shadow outlines. One, on loan from Yale, depicts an ancient, gnarled plum in flower, a traditional subject. At first glance the composition feels correct, but at second glance one realises that the background of this ancient tree is a cluster of flowering narcissus that is twice the height of the tree itself! Style of Depicting Rocks in Chen Hongshu’s PaintingsRocks are another of the Five Elements to receive his peculiar attention and this is seen in the form of low tables with individuals around them. Completely flat on top, the rough sides reveal the table to a single slab of stone – a remarkable piece of stone cutting work, if it were ever done in the first place. Garden seats and plant stands are often depicted by him as scholar type stones with flat tops, a possibility, but not a probability. Going from small stones to mountains is where the artist’s bizarre imagination can go. The Mountain of the Five Cataracts, a 1624 hanging scroll on loan from Cleveland, looks for all sakes and purposes to be a traditional mountain landscape, but, once again, on closer inspection, one realises that there has been mischief afoot. One of the waters flowing from the top of the mountains is slightly darker than the others and rather than looking like water, it resembles the flow of cold honey. This really wonderful exhibition is not just a groundbreaking one for this artist, but one that challenges the viewer to entertain the adjectives in one’s head – peculiar/eccentric/odd/ strange/abnormal/quirky/whimsical/off-centre/unconventional … in an attempt to describe this man’s paintings to one’s own satisfaction. By Martin Barnes Lorber Repentant Monk: Illusion and Disillusion in the Art of Chen Hongshou, until 28 January, 2018 at University of California Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. An illustrated catalogue is available with essays by Hiromitsu Kobayashi, professor emeritus at Sophia University in Tokyo; Shi-yee Liu, assistant research curator of Chinese art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Tamara Bentley, associate professor of Asian art history at Colorado College Figures, flowers, and landscapes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A.) This album has four paintings by the late Ming master Chen Hongshou and seven by his son Chen Zi. The first is one of the most iconic images in Chen Hongshou’s oeuvre—a mournful self-portrait depicting the artist drowning his sorrows in wine. It is followed by paintings of landscapes, birds, flowers, and figures. The combining of diverse subjects in a single album was known as “zahua,” and it was an opportunity for a painter to demonstrate versatility. A zahua album is meant to delight the viewer with variety, as a new subject appears with each turn of the page. The paintings may have been brought together into an album by a collector at a later date, or even perhaps by Chen Zi himself. Comparison of the two men’s work reveals that while Chen Zi worked in his father’s style, he could not match his father’s fluidity or quirky charm. 明/清 陳洪綬、陳字 雜畫 冊 Title: Figures, flowers, and landscapes Artist: leaves a–d by Chen Hongshou (Chinese, 1598/99–1652) Artist: leaves e–k by Chen Zi (Chinese, 1634–1711) Period: Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties Date: one leaf dated 1627 Culture: China Medium: Album of eleven leaves; ink and color on silk Dimensions: Image: 8 3/4 x 8 9/16 in. (22.2 x 21.7 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Wan-go H. C. Weng, 1999 Accession Number: 1999.521a–k About Chen Zi: A native from Zhuji, in northern Zhejiang, Chen Zi survived extreme hardship in childhood during the early years of the Manchu conquest. As a professional artist, however, his works reflect little anguish over the dynastic change.In both painting and calligraphy, Chen Zi followed the style of his illustrious father, the highly influential artist Chen Hongshou (1599–1652). Although the son tended to reduce the father’s archaic mannerisms into hardened conventions, he was no less versatile or experimental. This album, which covers the genres of landscape, human figure, flower-and-bird, and animal painting, demonstrates the range of his talents. The landscapes are intended to exemplify the contrasting "dry” and “wet” modes. Finely outlined flowers are juxtaposed with leaves rendered in graded ink washes in the “boneless” manner. The gaunt monk distracted by a strange animal may allude to a folk- or Buddhist tale. Chen Zi bore both the gift and the burden of being trained by his father Chen Hongshou, one of the most original figure painters ever to wield a brush. The junior Chen was taught to work in an identifiable style with a known market, but the shadow of his father’s accomplishment enveloped him, stifling further growth.
Price: 9500 USD
Location: Orange, California
End Time: 2024-09-19T03:32:39.000Z
Shipping Cost: N/A USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Artist: Attributed Chen Hongshou
Signed By: Attributed Chen Hongshou
Size: Large
Signed: Yes
Period: Renaissance (Pre-1600)
Material: Ink, Paper, Silk
Region of Origin: California, USA
Framing: Framed
Subject: Calligraphy, China, Cityscapes, Community Life, Costumes, Family, Flowers, Forest, Ladies, Landscape, Men, Musical Instruments, Mythology, Plants, Silhouettes, Still Life, Tree, Women, Working Life
Type: Painting
Original/Licensed Reproduction: Original
Item Height: 69 3/4 in
Style: Chinese, Figurative Art
Theme: Art, Cities & Towns, Continents & Countries, Cultures & Ethnicities, Domestic & Family Life, Events & Festivals, Exhibitions, Famous Places, Fashion, Floral, Food & Drink, History, Hobbies & Leisure, Nature, People, Portrait, Social History
Features: One of a Kind (OOAK)
Production Technique: Watercolor Painting
Country/Region of Manufacture: China
Handmade: Yes
Item Width: 32 1/4 in
Time Period Produced: Pre-1700
