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Hello, this is from the Shanghai arts and crafts studio friendship store late 1950's or early sixties. Any help with the artists's name and translation would be greatly appeciated. This was mounted into a matboard window after the trip..it is a real painting not a print...thanks

This painting is dated 壬戌 which is 1982, or 1922, but I seriously doubt the earlier date because of the style and the calligraphy.

The artist's seal reads YuCheng 玉成

The signature colophon says YuCheng painted in Shanghai

I can't decipher the single (family name) seal yet

The leisure seal reads Dao ci wei yue 到此為樂 - This is fun.

Am wondering about the same thing. Stylized simplification of the already simplified 郑 ? Or is the radical really supposed to be read on the left side, eg 陆? am really grasping at straws, no doubt I am missing a more obvious possibility.

Thank you! Rat, and Mike, for taking a look at this. The estate this came from indicated that trips to China were made in late 50's or 60's, and please see the new photos of the Shanghai arts and crafts studio brochure that was attached to the back of the frame that this painting was in. I believe that the arts and crafts studio, became the arts and crafts Institute in 1962. The brochure graphics and type style, and layout, seem 50's or 60's to me, but possibly 80's ?..I don't know. The phone number's limited digits, and the Cable address seem to be from a time earlier than 1982.
At any rate, I defer to your analysis of the actual painting. One question is,do you think Yu Zheng or Yu Cheng, is the painter, or a previous owner? All of your help is greatly appreciated! Really want to identify this painter, even if the painter is lesser known or obscure, since this was sold through the Friendship store, I would think there should be other examples of this artist's work out there.....Many thanks..

I can only speak to what the painting and its inscription convey, which to me is that this is not an early 20th century picture. It's clearly based on, but more "modern" than, Xu Beihong's horses, which remain a popular theme painted by aspiring Chinese artists today.

The name Yucheng 玉成 is either the painter's given name or a pen name, but is explicitly the painter's name as Mikeoz pointed out in his translation of the lower section of the inscription: "Painted by Yucheng in Shanghai." Neither of us is reading the surname from the first seal though, for whatever reason, perhaps someone else will see what it is right away. With the surname you have a better chance of finding out what the artist's actual name is if Yucheng is a pen name. However this is pretty clearly a minor painter and won't be easy to track down.

The other thing that is odd about the inscription is that it appears to start with the 壬戌 date, which corresponds to 1982, but then is followed if I am not misreading by a different date, 壬子夏日, "a summer day in 1972." I have never, ever seen two different years on an inscription before though, so perhaps I am misreading. If for some reason however 1972 is the correct date (despite the presence of the more prominent 壬戌 date which precedes it (which makes no obvious sense), at least the 1972 date seems more consistent with the fonts and design of the flyer you attached. But this is really speculative on my part. Am afraid your quest will need to await someone who can make more definitive sense of this information.

Dear Rat,

I fear our artist is being too clever by half in determining the date of the painting. I think the year is 壬戌 as previously stated, but then (using the characters from the astrologic (四柱命理) Bazi system) the artist then nominated the month as 壬子 before stating the season as Summer.

At first I read that (those) characters as a rather scratchy rendition of nian (year), but after enlarging the illustration and studying the brushstrokes, I feel your suggested reading is correct - only my now interpretation is different.

Aha! That makes sense, though I have never seen both a year and a month written with cyclical dates on a painting before (though it does happen in the prefaces of older books). So that leaves the date summer 壬戌, ie 1982.

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