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Subject:chinese scroll painting ming period?
Posted By: gary Thu, Jun 29, 2017 IP: 2607:fcc8:f7cb:a300:

Can anyone help me with this?
I have four scrolls that appear to be very old and by the same artist. Not sure if they are on linen or paper. I can post more pictures as well.







Subject:no help here, unfortunately
Posted By: rat Thu, Jun 29, 2017

These are interesting pictures but I don't remember encountering similar ones before. Please post the other two if you don't mind. They are certainly Chinese, but have an unusual format (not being hanging scrolls with a roller at the bottom, and perhaps painted directly onto the cloth rather than painted separately and mounted on a backing--can't quite tell from your photos). The subjects seem secular, the sort of thing people might hang up in their study, at odds with what I would expect to see on a banner-like hanging such as this, that is perhaps more suited to a temple or for display during a festival.

Stylistically the opaque colors and depiction of the rocks recall examples of very early Chinese landscape style, such as the Tang-era pictures preserved on musical instruments now in Japan: https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/282/flashcards/2664282/png/untitled1361857924218.png

and this Song painting that is in Tang style: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Li_Chao-tao_001.jpg

Your pictures are not early (I can't say whether they are Ming, but their condition suggests something more recent, perhaps done by an urban professional artist during the Qing), I just post the links above to indicate that your artist was to some degree familiar with early Chinese painting styles as well as upper class taste.

Maybe check van Gulik's "Chinese Pictorial Art" for examples of similar banners/formats and when they were used, otherwise seek advice from curators at major museums or Chinese painting specialists at Sothebys/Christies/Bonhams.

Subject:Re: chinese scroll painting ming period?
Posted By: Bill H Thu, Jun 29, 2017

I can offer a shallowly educated opinion that your scrolls may be true antiques, or at least 100 years or more old. However, they aren't what would be expected from a trained Ming artist, and they possibly didn't originate in China.

This view rests with the painting style having a perceptible amount of drift away from the traditional artistic canons that would have governed the teaching of artists who came up under the Qing or Ming apprentice system, wherein aspirants to scholarly disciplines would have been taught by an accomplished master.

What I take to be rough edges suggests that the artist here might have been educated some distance away from not only the better trained masters but also easy access to copyable collections of woodblocks prints or other examples of traditional Chinese art. I've seen such effects of time and distance on art when visiting temples and antique shops in Chinese communities in Bangkok, Manila, Malacca, other Straits Chinese communities and elsewhere around Southeast Asia.

Perhaps this post at least will spark further comment.

Bill H.

Subject:Re: chinese scroll painting ming period?
Posted By: gary Fri, Jun 30, 2017

Thank you so much gentlemen for your knowledgeable thoughtful opinions. The paint is directly applied to the material. I am posting three more pics and any further insight would be appreciated.







Subject:Re: chinese scroll painting ming period?
Posted By: Rat Sat, Jul 01, 2017

Thank you for the additional photos. I can't add much of anything, except that I checked van Gulik, who likewise points to such banners as religious, specifically as an Indian format that arrived in China with the transmission of Buddhism in the 4th/5th century or so, before the Chinese had come up with the typical hanging scroll shown in one of your own banner-type pictures. Paintings on banners were found in Dunhuang, for example. Earlier, pre-Buddhist, Chinese examples survive from Han tombs, the best known example being from Mawangdui and showing mythical and cosmological figures. But none have the surface divided into separate pictorial areas as yours do, as if each banner represented several individual pictures or plaques set into a panel. That's a much more recent form of decoration, perhaps no earlier than Qing.

Bill H's suggestion of an overseas Chinese origin is an interesting possibility, but not one I know enough to comment on.

(The shading done to the garments of some of your figures was present to a more subtle degree in early Chinese figure painting, but that alone doesn't make them early too. The shading might reflect exposure to western art, for example)

These are quite interesting for being unusual though, and worth looking further for answers about. Please come back and share whatever you are able to learn about them, I'd be interested to hear it. Sorry not to be of more help.

Subject:Re: chinese scroll painting ming period?
Posted By: Gary Sun, Jul 02, 2017

Thank you again for your response.
You seem to be very versed on this subject.
A few more pics.
Gary







Subject:Re: chinese scroll painting ming period? Rat Bill
Posted By: Gary Wed, Aug 15, 2018

Thanks again for your comments.
Just wanted you to know that these scrolls will be at Freemans asian arts auction in Philadelphia on September 7.


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