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Hi,

I have been here before but changed my name as it was some spontaneous nonsense. (and the way the season went it would be embarrassing to keep using it)

I am trying to gather information about one of my Guan Yu paintings.

It shows the beginning of the scene 'Guan Yu riding alone for thousands of miles' when he leaves Cao Cao to reunite with Liu Bei. (at first he escorts two female relatives and the soldiers of Cao Cao are going after them, but finally Cao Cao decides to let them leave)

It was made on thin silk and mounted on paper.
Can anyone figure out the meaning of the seal and the inscription? Does it provide any information about the artist?

What is the age of the painting? It should be from Qing but I am not sure if late (what I thought at first) or earlier (I had found a painting with a similar background dating to early-mid Qing).



I also have a general question:

Does anyone know an antique Chinese painting which shows Guan Yu, Liu Bei and Zhang Fei together? (nowadays there is a ton of modern works out there)

This may seem like a strange question at first as there are many pictures around which depict Guan Yu and 2 other persons. However those other two are not Liu Bei and Zhang Fei but Zhou Cang and Guan Ping. Zhou Cang is most likely a fictional character and used to be the servant of Guan Yu. That is why he is always holding the halberd which is not his weapon but belongs to Guan Yu.

For example the earliest known (still existing) painting of Guan Yu is from the 1st half of the 15th century and was made by Shang Xi. The two persons next to Guan Yu are Zhou Cang and Guan Ping but many times people mix up Zhou Cang with Zhang Fei and Guan Ping with Liu Bei. And there are many other works showing these three people (like the painting in the Met Museum from around 1700 after Guan Yu was deified; judging from the style it could be a copy of the Shang Xi work).

So basically the group Guan Yu, Zhou Cang and Guan Ping appears to be a quite common in Chinese paintings. One can find plenty of material.
But there is no Chinese painting with the 3 sworn brothers. The exceptions are a few antique Japanese paintings. (one from the 18th century and it can be found on wikipedia)
Quite surprising. Also surprising that there are almost no antique paintings of Liu Bei available. Christies had sold a Japanese work once but this is all I could find. Oh and there is one Chinese painting of him from the Tang Dynasty made by Yan Liben on his emperor scroll which consists of 13 emperors.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

The first 2 pictures are smaller than I had expected.

I have uploaded two additional pictures so hopefully one can see the details of the painting better now.

several questions I don't have answers to without some research. your picture seems dated summer 1928 but the painter's name is not clear, perhaps 秋星 something. is there a seal you can post a closeup of?

I don't think there are images of the three characters together in imperial times, i think this is a modern development, but there may be some Ming pictures of them separately.

Hi,

thanks a lot for the Information. So it seems I have to wait for another few years until the painting is antique then?
Oh well that is Ok, it is not so far away from my original assumption (end 19th/early 20th).

There is only the seal on the left side above the inscription. (the one you can already see on the photo) I have included a close up but it is probably too blurry to identify anything.
But unfortunately it seems that is the best I can do.

I am a little bit confused: The two Chinese characters you have posted mean Autumn Star in English? Do you know the meaning of this?

Yes, there seem to be Ming paintings of Guan Yu around but not really that many. I would have expected to discover a lot more since that was the time of his deification.
However I have not found any of Liu Bei and Zhang Fei yet.

Regards

You are right about the seal, I haven't the faintest idea what it reads! As I look at the inscription though, 秋星 seem to be the first two of three characters of the artist's name. I can't make out the third. 秋 usually means autumn but can also be a surname. if so, the given name should be 星-something. The writing was done fast and without much care--this seems like a casual decorative picture. it may not be possible to identify the artist.

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