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Zhang Daqian 1899-1983 Chinese Watercolour Beauty

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:3,000.00 USD Estimated At:18,000.00 - 23,000.00 USD
Zhang Daqian 1899-1983 Chinese Watercolour Beauty
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Tang style painting of beauty; Chinese ink and watercolour on paper; hanging scroll; signed Zhang Daqian (Chinese, 1899-1983), inscribed with 4 artist seals; with certificate; published on Page 2 of catalogue highlighting famous Chinese fine art paintings (ISBN 978-7-8310-7536-3); 103 cm x 45 cm. Chang Dai-chien (also known to some as Zhang Daqian) was born on May 10, 1899 in Nei-chiang, Szechwan as Chuan Chi, the ninth child of a wealthy family who had converted to Roman Catholicism. Resisting his family's efforts to push him into a business career, Chang briefly entered a Buddhist monastery before beginning serious study of Chinese calligraphy and painting at the age of 19. After an extended visit to Kyoto, Japan, Chang settled in Shanghai in 1919 to study with prominent artists Tseng Hsi (c.1861-1930) and Li Jui-ching (1867-1920). In a training method typical among art students in China, Chang made many arduous copies of artistic masterworks, beginning to develop his legendary (and notorious) ability to recreate works from diverse periods. Because of his family wealth, Chang first entered the Chinese artistic community as an amateur painter and connoisseur. The collapse of several family businesses in 1925 deprived Chang of his income and compelled him to begin selling his art work. His first exhibition of 100 paintings in 1926 was a great success and launched his career. The start of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 began a period of war and revolution that repeatedly disrupted Chang's artistic efforts, forcing him into flight several times. In 1939 he found refuge in the remote desert outpost of Tun-huang, where he spent more than two years copying the legendary murals in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. Leaving China in the wake of the Civil War of 1949, Chang sojourned in Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Argentina before settling in 1954 into a 30-acre compound outside Sao Paolo, Brazil that he named the "Garden of Eight Virtues." Chang continued to exhibit his art in the US and Europe, traveling to Paris in 1956 for a breakthrough show of his paintings at the Musée d'Art Moderne. Chang's meeting with Pablo Picasso during this trip was given considerable attention in the press as a meeting of the masters of Western and Eastern art. A dam construction project in the mid-1960s that would flood his home caused Chang to leave Brazil. California had impressed Chang during his numerous trips to the state, the first of which was in 1954. Chang moved to the Monterey Peninsula in 1967, eventually acquiring both a home in Carmel and another on the scenic Seventeen Mile Drive. Chang relocated to Taiwan in 1976, spending the last seven years of his life painting and creating his garden home known as the "Abode of Illusions." He never returned to California after 1979. In addition to his prized original works, Chang has become equally infamous for his recreations of Chinese masterpieces. His copies span 1,000 years of Chinese art and demonstrate a virtuoso talent for emulating, and even improving upon, the work of painters before him. Today many of these forgeries, still attributed to others, hang alongside Chang originals in museums worldwide. An article in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine on January 19, 1999 examined the controversy surrounding the reputed 10-th century Chinese painting The Riverbank owned by the Metropolitan Museum of New York, believed by some to be Chang forgery. PROVENANCE: Previously in the private collection of Mr. Kong Ming Ma, 1937-2017 and his father, Zhen Dao Ma (1907-1956 and thence by descent. Photographs featuring 1937-2017 with Zhang Daqian are available upon request. These photographs feature 1937-2017 at an exhibition of Zhang's work held in San Francisco (Circa 1970s) with Zhang Daqian personally in attendance. The photographs are possibly from the major retrospective presented in 1972 by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in which the exhibition presented several mural scale works as part of the gathering of one work from each year of Zhang Daqian's professional career. [Photographs are withheld at owner's request.]