David Wu Ject-Key

signed in pinyin and Chinese and stamped with the artist's seal

Important Private American Collection

This work is overall in very good condition. The canvas is relined with wax adhesive. There are abrasions along the borders. There are slight creases across the surface. There is no sign of restoration under UV light.
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In retrospect, Hometown Memories exudes a sense of Wu's personal sentiments, particularly in the way he reflects upon his Chinese upbringing. Having immigrated to America as a teenager, Wu's memory of his Chinese hometown only serves as a distant memory. By closely studying the figures in the piece, the viewer is able to distinguish a different time period (most probably the Qing Dynasty), showing that the scene in the painting is vastly different to the year it was painted. The image of a hometown is fused together with a depiction of a living environment, wholly reconstructed by the artist in his own personal way. Compositionally, Wu has placed a tall white wall towards the middle of the composition, which dominates most of the space within the canvas, and also acts as the predominant background. This is broken up by an arrangement of three sets of bamboo, which perch towards the foreground. The main figures in the painting are placed strategically in spaces between the wall and bamboo in a slightly confined space, thus creating a stronger sense of ambiguity within the distance depicted in the painting. The placement of houses on the far right side of the canvas lends the composition a fuller sense of space. The figures seated towards the right side of the picture plane also allow the viewer to imagine a further sense of a village behind the drastically tall white wall, giving the painting a sense of continuity.

Furthermore, Hometown Memories exemplifies the Lingnan culture of Southern China. However, it showcases typically European traits in its technique, particularly within the clear influence of the French Barbizon School, which flourished in the 19^th Century. This idea of exemplifying simple domestic life was notably recognized by the French artists Corot and Daubigny, as they sought to depict the "glamour" of villages in the narration of the villager's day-to-day lives. In the same way, Wu uses delicate and detailed painting techniques to express his nostalgia towards his own hometown culture, thus infusing a sense of Western style into his thoroughly Oriental subject.