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Hello!

I have seen a many porcelain landscape plaques, a few were snow scenes, and none were of snow scenes at night.

This plaque is dated Wu Wu (1918?), but I'm wondering if someone would be kind enough to offer a translation of the rest of the calligraphy and identify the artist.

The plaque is rendered entirely in grisaille (except for the iron red houses) and all the white areas are done WITHOUT any slip that creates the clear glossy finsih - the surface of the plaque feels almost like unfinished porcelain that has been polished. Anyone see anything like this?

Thanks!

there's no identifying information about the artist in the inscription or seal. the first four characters are a title, "Massed Snow in X Mountains", the missing character for me being the first in the inscription. the remainder is "winter, wuwu year"

However, in this case wuwu year cannot be 1918 and most likely is not 1978 either. Wuwu is instead most likely an apocryphal date created by the artist, because the painting on which your plaque is based, a landscape in the Tianjin Municipal Art Museum attributed to Song painter Fan Kuan (see: http://arts.cultural-china.com/en/77Arts6620.html) was not published until the painting was donated to the museum in 1981. (http://www.wantinews.com/news-6056943-Wintry-snow-alongside-the:-Continental-Fan-Kuan-only-extant-works.html) The impurities on the surface and the lack of slip also suggest that this is a recent work meant to appeal to the current market for Republic-era painted plaques.

Thanks, Rat!

Spot on copy of the painting. Given the generally poor quality of the Republic plaque copies that I have seen, this one is still quite pleasing despite being modern.

Tim

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