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I purchased a hanging scroll from an local auction in the US that struck me as an interesting take on the traditional Chinese landscape with man-made structures that are very prominent. I enjoy it, but I recently found out that this auction house focused on Asian art may put too much faith in the story of their consignors, a friend forwarded an article of a $1.7M vase that was ultimately withdrawn as it was a (obvious?) reproduction.

The description read:
"China, scroll painting, modern coastal village landscape, houses, hills, ships and a dam depicted, characters and two seal marks on the left, attributed to Song Wenzhi. Length 27 in., Width 17 in."

I suspect the attribution to Song Wenzhi is unwarranted. The artist was not the reason I bought the scroll, but I am curious if I should trust the auction house in the future. Does anyone recognize the seals or able to read the calligraphy?








Link :Archived Auction Page

Hi Dave,

Whenever an auction house writes "attributed to X" in their descriptions, they are communicating that the work is not "by X". In this case, the painting is inscribed and impressed as if it is by Song Wenzhi, but there are several images of very close paintings online. Here is one closest to yours:

http://img15.artxun.com/sdd/oldimg/c2ab/c2ab76bee9eac6d2c3c1dd8f1d143e91.jpg

To see it and the others, paste this into Google images: 宋文治新安江

Thanks for the reply rat.

I am grateful to see Song Wenzhi's original work with this scene, it is truly beautiful! Indeed, it is obvious that my duplication is close but missing some of the energy of the original. I will enjoy the scroll more now, thanks.

The "attributed to" seems to be an optimistic assessment - and I would expect no less in a commercial description. I appreciate your expertise in this area that was able to quickly identify the original, but for a regional auction house should I expect this to be an obviously forged inscription? I'm relatively naive in this world, but a bit of quick research into art auction terms suggest "after" or "in the manner of" would be the go to term for such a work? Appreciate hearing your thoughts on expectations, just curious what the norm is.

For regional auction houses, the norm is always "buyer beware". The catalog descriptions and estimates of even leading auction houses must be parsed with much care, especially if you are not able to visit to handle a piece yourself before bidding.

Generally speaking, "after" or "in the manner of" are meant to describe works that are "clearly" (a relative term) not by the artist in question but share some of the artist's stylistic characteristics. They are for looser imitations than yours, which is a close copy of an existing work despite the differences that you can identify by comparing it with the online example.

Chinese paintings are a difficult category unfortunately, and everybody makes mistakes. Never buy something because it is supposed to be by some famous artist. Buy it because you like it. If you can buy something you like that is also of good quality, so much the better. If you can find something you like of good quality at a good value, you've hit the trifecta.

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