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26

Zhang Daqian Nobel on Horse Certificate Provenance

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:2,500.00 USD Estimated At:30,000.00 - 60,000.00 USD
Zhang Daqian Nobel on Horse Certificate Provenance
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Ink and watercolour on paper, featuring nobleman on horseback, hanging scroll; signed Zhang Daqian (Chinese, 1899-1983), inscribed with 2 artist seals; with certificate, signed by Shan Guo Qiang. 92.5 x 33 cm (36.41 x 12.99 inches). Zhang has become equally well known 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 examples of his works, still attributed to others, hang alongside Zhang originals in museums worldwide. Zhang Daqian (also known to some as Chang Dai-chien) 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, Zhang 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, Zhang 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, Zhang made many arduous copies of artistic masterworks, beginning to develop his legendary ability to recreate works from diverse periods. Because of his family wealth, Zhang first entered the Chinese artistic community as an amateur painter and connoisseur. The collapse of several family businesses in 1925 deprived Zhang 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 Zhang’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 learning from the legendary murals in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.

Leaving China in the wake of the Civil War of 1949, Zhang 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. Zhang continued to exhibit his art in the US and Europe, traveling to Paris in 1956 for a breakthrough show of his paintings at the Musee d'Art Moderne. Zhang'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 Zhang to leave Brazil. California had impressed Zhang during his numerous trips to the state, the first of which was in 1954. Zhang moved to the Monterey Peninsula in 1967, eventually acquiring both a home in Carmel and another on the scenic Seventeen Mile Drive. Zhang 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. PROVENANCE: Previously in the private collection of Mr. Kong Ming Ma, (1937-2017) and purchased directly from Zhang Daqian's studio in Taiwan and thence by Mr. Kong Ming Ma, (1937 -2017) (school name as Yi Jia, also known as Mu Shui). He was born and raised in Hong Kong. Mr. Ma was a famous Cantonese chef in both Hong Kong and Taiwan in the eighties. He opened a Cantonese Style Seafood Restaurant named "Guo Long Restaurant" in Castle Peak Road, Kowloon and Wan Chai District, Hong Kong Island during the 60’s. At that time, he met Mr. Hu Renmu. Mr. Hu was one of the founders and the First President of “Min Qiu Jing She” Hong Kong. Both of them had become good friends. Gradually, he had begun to get involved in collecting Chinese painting and calligraphy artworks. In the 70Â’s, Mr. Ma started visiting artists such as Zhang Daqian. He traveled to, Brazil, England, Japan, and the USA to visit artists and collect artworks directly from them. In Early 80’s, he has served the Taipei Crown Plaza Hotel, Lin Park Hotel and Grand Hotel Taipei as Chief Executive Chef and Director. While living in Taiwan, he was able to meet the descendants of Mr. Zhang Daqian. In 1989 Mr. Ma and his family migrated to the United States. In the mid 90's he started to travel to China and focusing on building his collections of the late modern Chinese artists’ artworks mainly in Chinese ink paintings. Mr. Ma passed away in Feb 2017.

Photographs featuring (1937-2017) with Zhang Daqian are available upon request. These photographs feature (1937-2017) at an exhibition of Zhang's work held at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, San Francisco on November 1972. The photographs are said to be 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.
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