Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board

Season Greetings, friends!

Picked up these 2 beautiful fan paintings. I would appreciate some help with the translation of the Chinese calligraphy and the artists.

Since I don't read Chinese, I was thinking the bird and flower painting is done in the manner of Ren Xun. As for the landscape, I have no idea.

Gallery label indicates both were framed in Springfield, MA...looks to have been done in the 1970-80's.

Thanks for the help!

oy, these need a bit more research than a free website will justify unless someone else can read the artist and place names/seals readily. Agree that your fan painting is typical Shanghai school, dated (likely September) 1888. The landscape is dated autumn, either 1860 or 1920, not enough information to be sure which at the moment.

Thank you, Rat!

The dates and confirmation that the bird painting is Shanghai school should be helpful with identifying the artist. I'll try my hand at finding a matching seal through auction records and some books I own.

I'm assuming the landscape painting will not be as easy to find, even though the signature/seals are much clearer.

Maybe I'll get lucky.

Happy New Year!

I think the landscape picture will be easier actually: the artist's surname is clearly Wang 王 but my cursive skills aren't good enough to decipher the given name or the place name that precedes the surname; the seal impressions are quite clear but I'm not getting which characters they are despite the elements I can identify. Go through Shuowen or a zhuanshu dictionary to find what their kaishu forms are and then look them up in an index of alternative artists' names and you may get a hit.

The seal on the fan picture of the birds looks too worn to read but the inscription seems to include the artist's given name (fourth line from end), location name (the two lines preceding that), studio name (last two lines), and recipient's name (first few columns).

I took both paintings out of their frames.

Turns out that the bird painting has a 2nd small seal. Also, a note was taped to the inside of the matting that identifies the artist as 'Wong Ür-shih' and the date as 1828.

I re-took a photo of the seals...looks a lot clearer to read, but still not great.

I doubt the painting is earlier than 1888 given the style, so I'm not sure if the name is accurate or not.

No notes or additional information found when I removed the landscape painting from the frame.

Also, got lucky (again) yesterday. I purchased another fan painting from an entirely different source (200 miles away), but also seems to be a good quality Shanghai piece dated 1891 spring. Do you recognize the artist?

the new fan painting is signed as by Wang Ye, a Republic-era painter, primarily of bird/flower themes. You have the cyclical year correct, but it is probably 1951, though I can't say if the picture is genuine.

New seal photo doesn't help, as the useful characters are obscured by the inscription. No idea who Wong Ur-shih is supposed to be (Wang Ershi, presumably) but it certainly postdates 1828.

Hi Rat,

The seals on the landscape fan are clear, but confusing. The first character of the 'signature' line is 'O', meaning a goose. It has been written with the 'Wo' (I,me) on top of the 'Niao' bird, while the more conventional printed character has these elements side by side. The next character (and second seal) is Chi, meaning Pond.

I am still in hospital (week 6) and away from my references so can't make much further comment. But this might start others. Looks like a pen name to me, otherwise why the seals with the same characters!

Thanks so much for this clarification Mikeoz, you've cracked the code... I would not have guessed the right side of "chi" and was confused by the bottom half of "e". Wang Yanzhou 王延周 used the pen name 鹅池, and initially went by 州元, which is how he is signed here. Supposedly he worked during the Qianlong reign and into the Jiaqing reign. However the only other example of his work I find online was a similar fan of buildings in landscape auctioned by Poly that has rather different looking calligraphy, so it's not clear this one (or that one) is a genuine example by Wang，though this looks reasonable to me and if genuine should be 1800.

Wow! Absolutely blown away....many thanks to Rat and Mikeoz.

I tried searching for any references/auction records under Wang Yanzhou and the various Chinese character names you've provided, but without much success.

Rat - could you provide me with a link to the Poly reference?

I hope to get back into the home these paintings came from....might be a few more goodies.

Best,
Tim

Tried a few more times looking for the auciton listing...finally came up.

Thanks.

Here's the link if others want to see:

http://www.polypm.com.cn/index.php?s=Auction/view/ppcd/art62820530

Click on the blue ribbon below the photo for a partial enlarged view.

Here's the same fan on another website.
http://auction.artron.net/paimai-art62820530/

Yours certainly seems the better quality picture; PRC auctions still include numerous fakes, imitations, and other shenanigans.

Asian Arts | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries | Message Board