Chu Teh-Chun (Zhu Dequn)

Private Collection, France
Private Collection, Paris (acquired in 1990)

This work is in overall very good condition. There is no apparent inpainting under UV light examination.
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An Eternal Moment

Clartés paisibles: Chu Teh-Chun’s Majestic Snow Scene

“When I paint a painting, it always feels like part of my lifelong journey. Sometimes, it's an irresistible, momentary impulse; other times, it's a memory from long ago, perhaps even something forgotten, that the canvas called back to mind”.

-Chu Teh-Chun

After arriving in Paris in 1955, Chu Teh-Chun established himself in the art circles of post-war France with a distinctive style of emotional, abstract expression. By the 1980s, he was receiving invitations to participate in major exhibitions in China and around the world. In addition to affirming his achievements in the art world, his international travels also stimulated his visual and psychological perceptions, providing inspiration for his creative work. In the winter of 1985, a trip from Paris to Switzerland for the opening of the “Five Abstract Painters” exhibition at Galerié Pierre-Hubert led to a seminal transformation in his work.

According to Chu Teh-Chun’s recollections, his train to Geneva was passing through the Alps when a heavy snow suddenly began to fall. The swirling snowflakes came down fast and strong from the curling clouds and mist. The artist was so moved by the fast changes to the scene outside his window that he could not sleep, and images from Tang Dynasty poems arose in his mind. Once he had returned to Paris following the exhibition, he began painting snow scenes, and he produced a variety of distinctive interpretations of the theme between 1985 and 1989. This series of paintings marks a special period of the artist’s long life of creative work. The number of paintings in the series is relatively small: according to extant catalogues and public auction results, there are no more than forty Chu Teh-Chun snow scenes. Clartés paisibles (Lot 1032) is a representative work from this series. The painting has been held in a private French collection for the past few decades, and is now available for auction for the first time—a rare opportunity.

Sparks fly as Western compositional structure meets Chinese xieyi aesthetics

“In the past, I knew that making paintings meant painting my own perceptions, but it's no easy matter to do so. I painted with all my effort, using oil paint and lines to pursue my perceptions. Today, I can finally get out all the ideas in my mind. It’s not until now that I feel that I can freely express all the things that I want to express”.

- Chu Teh-Chun, interview with Lion Art magazine, 1985

The most challenging aspect of painting a snow scene is to clearly express the depth and the movement of a snowy world. After more than thirty years of exploring oil paints and the formal language of abstraction, Chu Teh-Chun achieved in Clartés paisibles the realm of proficiency he mentions in the above quotation. He had mastered both Chinese and Western aesthetics through comprehensive study, allowing him to produce a highly distinctive painting. His foundation in Western fine arts techniques endowed him with a mastery of realist observation, perspective, deconstruction, and structural composition. In contrast, the Eastern tradition of ink painting emphasises the rhythmic vitality of xieyi (freehand) brushwork. Chu Teh-Chun drew on the strengths of both artistic lineages, replacing realism with xieyi but retaining the Western structural concepts of perspective and composition. Seen from a Western perspective, Clartés paisibles is merely a landscape painting, with towering blue-black mountains that horizontally traverse the canvas. The centre of the tableau is a stream that descends from the horizon, twisting and turning toward the foreground, filling the space with a rich sense of motion. The perspective vanishes into the upper-centre of the canvas, where the layers of space stretch endlessly into the distance. Chu Teh-Chun uses xieyi technique in the depiction of the mountains and the stream, preserving only the magnificent outer shape and forceful features of the mountain peaks, which he transforms with multiple layers of colour blocks. The painting does not contain any other clear outlines; instead, it makes room for us to sense the presence of the scenery, and therein lies artist's genius.

Rhythmic vitality, free-flowing and bold

In my paintings, colour and line are never coincidental. They work together toward the same goals: to conjure light, and to evoke image and poetry.

- Chu Teh-Chun　

Seen from an Eastern perspective, Clartés paisible expresses a world brimming with motion and atmosphere. The sense of movement is evident at three levels. The first is the rhythm of the snow, which the artist produced with back-and-forth motions with a brush dripping with white paint. The layers of white dots that compose the snow descend from top to bottom and fill the tranquil space between the mountains and the sky. In these traces of movement we can feel the breath and kinetic energy of the artist as he boldly wielded his brush. There is a pleasing variation in the size of the white dots that replicates the rhythms of nature and brings to mind the vivid poetry of Bai Juyi:

The bold strings rattled like splatters of sudden rain,

The fine strings hummed like lovers’ whispers.

Chattering and pattering, pattering and chattering,

As pearls, large and small, on a jade plate fall.

Reviewing the history of Chinese painting, we see that snow was exquisitely portrayed by both Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty and Zhong Qinli of the Ming Dynasty. In Riverside under Snow, Wang Wei uses layers of dilute ink to depict a scene of snow covering the banks of a river, trees barren of their leaves, and swans flying to the horizon. Zhong Qinli creates a similar effect in Boat on a Snowy Creek, in which snow serenely covers the mountains and the earth. In his own painting, Chu Teh-Chun draws on spirit of xieyi landscape painting but uses the Western medium of oil paints to express a dynamic scene of falling snow, creatively and masterfully capturing the movement of time in a single frame.

The second level of movement in the painting comes from the unconstrained lines and bold swaths of colour. The lines on the canvas seem to fly in different directions in accordance with the artist’s hand. Some move horizontally or vertically; others rise and fall in curves and angles. They rush freely across the canvas, seemingly improvised but in actuality the result of the artist’s careful consideration. In these lines we can detect the profound skill that comes from Chu Teh-Chun's years of calligraphy practice. His brushstrokes are vigorous and free, striking the perfect balance between heavy and light, effusive and restrained.

The distribution of colour on the canvas constitutes the third level of movement. The tableau is primarily composed of white and black-blue. The large swaths of black-blue form the structure of the painting, but the artist sedulously painted large portions of the foreground and the background white. These areas are not blank; rather, they are light-coloured inundations of varying density. The leaping forms in the foreground stretch up into the background of the painting, creating a lively sense of rhythm. They also seem to be active light sources that gently shine upon the dreamlike beauty of the space, giving us a sense of inexhaustible hope and brightness. The deeply moving effect is unforgettable.

Clartés paisible embodies Chu Teh-Chun's comprehensive mastery and innovative reinterpretations of Eastern and Western aesthetics. The confident, fluent, and free-flowing lines of his brush, as well as the vivid use of colour and the meticulous structuring of the space, make this painting a major work from the artist’s mature period. Chu Teh-Chun creates for us a dreamscape of stunning beauty that can be interpreted and appreciated from multiple perspectives. He strikes an open posture, inviting us into the painting, where we can linger in his company.