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This ancient silk landscape painting is attributed to Huang Gongwang from Yuan Dynasty. Has been restored and remounted from mostly fragmentary image many decades ago. I bought this painting over a decade ago along with other artwork and curios. All opinions welcome.

Just was wondering whether it’s worthwhile to pursue investigation on true age of this painting.

Your photos are to small in size and resolution to say anything. At least the composition could fit the master. But the signature looks conveniently well preserved. For authentication the brushwork of the painting itself is the important thing. Close ups would tell the real nature of the repairs and the restoration too. The mounting is quite new. the cracked painting was placed in it unrestored. The cracks show up immediatly again.

One has to expect greatest affords by the greatest forgers from the beginning of the Ming until now to market successfully a Huang Gongwang painting....
peter

Hi and thanks. The image is fragmentary and appears remounted on another silk base then on paper. There are missing pieces and some touch ups evident. The artist seal has fragments missing. The mounting looks circa early mid 20th century. Here are some more photos. Hope these are better but are still limited to 100kb.

Thanks for the additional photos. Still hard to say much (aside from the fact that it's not by Huang), though stylistically it feels more inspired by Gao Kegong than Huang.

You mention a second layer of silk, which implies that the painting surface is silk, whereas the rounded losses in the picture and the meandering cracking strike me as atypical of the sharp-edged tears and losses that result from brittle silk.

Am not sure what the vegetation dots and texture strokes are adding to composition. You may be aware of Cahill's critique of the Met's "Riverbank" for the vagueness created by the lack of clear demarcation between mountaintop and background; a similar effect seems to be happening here.

Thanks Rat. I managed to get better closeups. Here are a couple of pictures closeups of silk. You can see the damaged image layer superimposed over an underlying silk layer. So clearly this had had some form of repair restoration done. I would love to get this authenticated. Do you know any experts that would be willing to look at this more closely?
Cheers
Paul.

Dear Paul,
Uploads up to 500kb are now possible.
About the quality of the painting one still can not say to much.
the latest close ups show some possible repairs there is some inpainting and a hole that might be created by a woodworm so it would be repeated about each 10 cm slightly different. A different silk is applied to replace with a similar stability.

You can send pictures also to the mail given to you from the forum. I do restore scroll paintings.

peter

Thanks Peter, couldn’t reply earlier due to error messages. here are some bigger images. What fascinates me is that someone went to an awful lot of trouble to remount this fragile badly degraded image. It was certainly a highly appreciated picture. As I said before it came from a very interesting private collection I acquired which included a fan calligraphy by Xu Shichang who was president of China 1918-1922, a pair of presentation bowls to prominent warlord Wang Zhanyuan and some Xuantong marked porcelain. I have shown this to some appraisers at auction houses but are not interested as they seem only concerned with condition, saleability and solid provenance. Can I send you some larger images to your email?
Regards
Paul

Thanks so much for the details. Yes I know an expert, let me check whether he is doing one-off work before connecting you. (You can reach me on yahoo mail at idio_tic)

was typing up a reply that a couple errant keystroke have now sent missing, but in case that doesn't show up here in a day or two, your picture seems based on Huang's Stone Pond at the Cliff of Heaven composition (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Huang_Gongwang._Stone_Cliff_at_the_Pond_of_Heaven.1341._139%2C4x57%2C3._Palace_Museum%2C_Beijing.jpg). Can't tell much from the photo you have posted (the titleslip can be ignored), but it's interesting enough to try to pin down its origins. Try posting details, I can't see a thing in the photo you have initially shared

Hi and thank you, the mountains do look similar to Huang Gongwang’s mountain paintings. I have posted more photos. Hard to get more detail with 100 kb limit. The image is very fragile. May consider getting this painting appraised.

given the damage and retouching, and the painting's apparent lack of distinctive brushwork, it may not have much commercial value; an appraisal may make more sense if you are primarily curious about its origin from an art historical perspective rather than its commercial prospects.

Thanks Rat. I have always been curious about this painting and it’s mysteries. I got it in a lot with a calligraphy fan signed by Xu Shichang as well as several high quality Chinese republic era porcelains and curios. Not so much concerned with value as is its history.

I very much appreciate your motivations, but unfortunately am not getting an invitation to connect you, sorry about that. For my part, I was looking for clues from the underlying brushwork but don't see a lot to go on in terms of tying the work to particular painting lineages (for instance, the picture seems unaffected by Qing orthodox painting, but is that an indication of an earlier date or of a later, local painter unconcerned with the inside baseball of literati style?)

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