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I would appreciate it if anyone knowledgeable in Chinese art could take a look at this and give an opinion as to its authenticity? I have 2 paintings, both framed like the one you see. The paintings themselves are about 9"x10", matted and framed in a much larger style. On the back, there is a label taped on each that indicates that some dealer along the way believed them to be by Chao Po-Chu. All I've found on the internet is that Chao was a painter in the 12th century, and a pic of one work attributed to him. Any info at all is welcome, thanks!

Zhao Boju is like a number of other Chinese painters throughout history to whose name later dealers have ascribed anonymous or lesser works. There's only one painting I know of that might seriously be considered painted by Zhao, a handscroll in Beijing's Palace Museum. But post your picture please, it would be interesting to see how close yours is to Zhao's. In this field there is often little certainty, only proximity.

Sadly, the smallest picture I can get is 150 KB, which means I can't post em here. So I've put them on my Flickr page, not sure if the forum will display the link I add here, but here goes:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sirlydan/sets/72157623750673540/
If not, I tagged them both with Chao Po-Chu

Thanks!

James,
More images will be necessary before an estimate
of your paintings can be determined. From the
photographs that you did post, I would say that
you probably have a silkscreened type image that
was then hand colored. Is the background of the
painting paper or silk? Get a magnifying glass
and look for fine details of where a brush was
used.
In order to size an image to less than 100K you have several options.
Best way, start with a high resolution and sharply focused picture. Use a program that will
let you see image size[ie. photoshop, corel, or
many others..freeware search] Set your image
size to 8" by 10" or so at 72 DPI. Now save your image in JPEG format at about a 60% to 70%
image quality. This should take a 1 MB file down to around a 100K file. Check the image properties to verify the image size before you submit it. Tweaking can be done by reducing the original to 7"y 9" or so.
The members of this
forum really do enjoy finding and researching
information on almost any requests.

Hi Danny, you can guess the age of a chinese painting by material used for the painting. The silk on old painting has a different weave to that of modern painting and replicas. One has to take a high magnification picture of the silk weave so that we can tell. If it is paper, there are different sorts of paper used in different periods. Pigment colors, scroll ends and mounting material are also important in determining the age of the painting. There are very good modern replicas around. Brush strokes, seals, style and calligraphy are important to determine the identity of the artist. Seals are also used to determine the number and importance of previous owners. Seal of a emperors like Qianlong or Huizong will vastly improve the price of the painting. However one starts off by posting a high resolution picture of the silk weave.

sorry, I overwrote something in the previous post and left in the word "not". my point was that the poster's painting is not by Zhao Boju, but is a 19th/20th century painting by an unnamed artist.

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