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Can anyone help with a translation of these 2 seals. The painting is otherwise unsigned.

Appears to be a wonderful 2 page folio painting of Xi Wangmu riding a phoenix along with 2 other princesses.

Among the clouds is the palsce of Mount Kunlun, surrounded by an orchard of the peach trees of longevity that only ripen once every 3,000 years. The fruit appears unripened, which would explain why they appear white in color.

Measures 27 3/4" wide x 16 1/2" tall.

The detail is amazing, but hard to see in the small photos below. Additional photos can be viewed and enlarged at the following link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23676403@N07/sets/72157632464029645/

Thanks for showing us the whole work, not just asking for some free service in reading seals, etc.

By way of saying thanks, here is the meaning of the seals.

The first seal is the name of the artist Xu JiuKun �}�i�b. I am a little unsure of the second character as it would seem to be incorrectly written. It could be either jin �i meaning advancement, or Tong �q meaning open. Kun �b is a kind of Jade. I tend to favour Jin as the second character, but I am not absolutely certain.

The second seal is a studio name or pen-name - Bai Zhai - the white studio ���N.

I look forward to friend Rat's comments.

mikeoz (Code: Big5)

Thank you for your help with reading the seal. I could not find any info on the Internet on Xu Jiukun. The painting appears to be of the Qing dynasty, but I would appreciate your thoughts on if you feel it is 18th or 19th c. Do you know anything about this artist?

I found some information on an artist by the name of Xu Baozhuan (1810-1873) who painted women, many from famous Chinese stories and in folio format. However, I do not see a strong similarity in the style of painting between my painting and the examples of Xu Baozhuan's paintings.

Nevertheless, the detail is amazingly fine. So, I decided to take a few more photos with a quarter next to each of the faces for perspective. BEAUTIFUL WORK!

This is a fine looking picture by a Xu Yankun
�}���b (Big 5) with Bai Zhai ���N (Big 5) as his nickname. I think that the reading of the second character as yan makes sense. His dates are 1777-1853, which fits the quality and style of this work nicely, and he was well known in his hometown of Beijing but has apparently faded from memory. That's the only biographical data I see on him, and I see no images attributed to the artist on google, so Tim you have a winner by an otherwise very obscure but good quality artist. Nicely done. If you don't mind taking a couple more photos, it would be nice to see pics of the two other female figures following Xi Wangmu.

Weird. I always have trouble getting typed Chinese characters to display correctly. Let's see if this attempt is any better:

Xu Yankun: 徐延琨
Baizhai (zhai is simplified in the seal legend): 白齋

Thank you, Rat! I added more photos in response to Mike's response that show the size of the women's face in relationship to a quarter. As you can see the detail is SUPER FINE.

I'm attaching 3 more photos below. Last photo was taken at an angle to show the gold gilt and what appears to be crushed mica or pearl that was mixed into the white paint for the flowers and peaches. Still, very difficult to see in such small format.

I am quite pleased to have acquired an eye for good quality paintings- many thanks to you and the help of other scholars who share in the Forum.

I am quite interested in learning to read the seals, but not knowing how to read Chinese, I wonder if it is even possible. Is there a reference guide? University course?

Let me know if you wish to see any additional photos.

Best, Tim

I'm afraid Mikeoz is your best bet for a reference guide to reading seals that we have. He is also an excellent calligrapher. The challenge with seals is that, like understanding many other aspects of Chinese art well, you need to pick up several different skills, not just one. As you may know, there are a number of different script types, and the same characters can look sometimes radically different depending on which script type they appear in. Complicating matters further is the fact that sealcarvers revel in unusual and obscure character forms and variants, so one needs either to learn what some of these variants are or simply learn how to make use of the numerous dictionaries of various scripts and compendia of early character forms (eg Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi dictionary). All of which is rather a pain if you have no particular interest in the language itself...

the characters on your seal are not particularly difficult to read actually, it's just that I'm not entirely familiar with how characters that I recognize in "standard" script look in some older script types and styles, so when I am just looking at unfamiliar forms, it can be far from obvious what the current standard form equivalent is. It's easy to guess at, but not easy to guess right.

In any case, thanks so much for sharing a fine early 19th century painting, particularly since it's by someone I've never heard of before. Do try to locate other works by this guy for comparison; I rather doubt there are more than a handful out there. It's a real pleasure to see something otherwise unknown of good quality. Certainly that is the reason I keep showing up here every day.

Actually I think that it is a lot easier than people think to develop an eye for good quality paintings. The trick seems to be finding them and having the money to buy them! So congrats on a lovely find. If you ever get sick of it, do pop it in the mail to me!

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