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I'm looking for some feedback on the quality, artist, age of this paintings. Thanks.

I bought this painting of Guanyin from a well to do family that traveled extensively in Asian. They had a fairly extensive collection of paintings from Japan, China, and India, although the quality was not consistent...some good, some reproduction (or later paintings copying earlier style). I'm hoping this one is the real deal.

The visible area of the painted silk is 71.5" x 37", but the matting may be concealing some of the painting below.

Anyway, a friend gave me the pinyin characters for what is written - 稽山弟子徐绍渭敬

Google translates this to "Jishan disciple XU Wei Jing". Xu Wei is a famous painter of the Ming dynasty, however all of the works I've found are brush paintings....not in this style.

If I understand the translation correctly, this painting is by a disciple of Xu Wei from the town of Jishan. However, I'm not sure about the translation.

There are 5 seals on the painting....the glass makes it very hard to photograph, but I'll give it another try in a few days.

I guess I felt the piece was 17/18th c., but haven't found anything quite the same in size or style....

Thanks for the help. If desired, I'll gladly post more photos...there is really a lot of detail to capture on this piece (hard to do in 3 pics).

Thanks,
Tim

This is a nice painting, but your understanding of the inscription is off, as it refers to someone named Xu Shaowei 徐绍渭, and not Xu Wei 徐渭 the Ming painter, who as you pointed out worked in an entirely different style. However Xu Shaowei is not referenced in any books I have at hand; the 稽山 named as his master might be someone named Fan Pu 范铺, who is listed as a Qing painter with this nickname who was good at painting peonies in monochrome ink. However that sort of painting is very far distant from this picture's style, so I suspect Fan Pu is not the Jishan mentioned in the inscription. One other possible option is that following the character 敬 "respectfully" in the inscription is not the character 畫 or 写 ("respectfully painted or inscribed"), but 赠 for "respectfully presented", in which case the Xu Shaowei would represent the donor pictured at the goddess's feet.

Stylistically it's somewhat hard to date as it incorporates elements from various periods, including, it seems to me, the 20th century.

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