ATTRIBUTED TO KUNCAN (SHIXI) | AUTUMN LANDSCAPE

signed Dianzhu daoren, dated xinchou, the eighth lunar month, with three seals of the artist, jie qiu, shi xi, ren ru xian ren With three collectors' seals of the Chew family, qiu yong he jian shang zhang, wu zhong ying yin, qiu fu lun cangwith one collector's seal of Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), zhang yuan zhi yin, and one collector's seal of Li Lincan (1913-1999), li zhuang jiu ren

- Paper bears tanned tone due to age. - Restoration of paper loss and ink loss can be found here and there. - Moderate surface dirt and stain.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Artist's inscription:
Beyond the divine abode is Mount Dan. Fifteen miles away is Qingtan Bay. Beneath the swirling green waves are shimmering fish. Across the topography the water flows resonantly and slowly. By turns the rocks resemble sheep and boars. From a distance Mount Dan is all purple. The Peak of Heavenly Citadel is shielded by rocky cliffs, which stand tall and precipitous around it. Giant evergreens cluster together as forests. The rapids sound as they clash urgently. A hundred strays of light recall cut gold and inlaid jade. Pine trees enshroud the distant hut in their shade. In his 20's, Zhang Daqian traded his forgery of a Shitao painting for an authentic Shitao album belonging to Huang Binhong. In his 30's, he created an ersatz Sleeping Gibbon attributed to Liang Kai (now at the Honolulu Academy of Art), which Wu Hufan regarded as a great treasure. Later, Zhang's forgery of a Juran landscape painting, Dense Forests and Layered Peaks, was acquired by the British Museum as an authentic antique. Having managed to fool or confuse so many world-class connoisseurs, Zhang Daqian was renowned as a forger as well as a painter.

The book Chang Dai-chien in California records that there was at one time a painting entitled Listening that bore a signature of the Yuan dynasty master Zhao Yong at the Chews' China Art Center. The book does not call this a forgery directly but says that "this work is actually a sort of self-portrait of Chang Dai-chien in characteristic beard and robes, and the rustling trees and other details are characteristic of his work." [1] Thomas Chew acquired Listening from Zhang Daqian, and the author of the book must have consulted him to be so certain. Perhaps Zhang had told Chew that he created the painting in his youth. In any case, neither the painting proper nor the inscription bears a resemblance to any known work by Zhao Yong or Zhao Mengfu.

Aside from this painting signed as Zhao Yong, the China Art Center collection also contained the landscapes bearing the signatures of Kuncan, Shitao, and Wu Zhen presently on offer (i.e. the present work and lots 1117 and 1118). Being a close friend of Zhang Daqian, Thomas Chew left no suggestion that they were painted by him. But based on what we know about Zhang's forgeries and close observation of the three works, we may make some conjectures.

Zhang Daqian's forgeries can be divided into three types. The first combines of elements of two or more paintings by the same artist. Dense Forests and Layered Mountains, for example, combines passages from Juran's Seeking the Dao in the Autumn Mountain (National Palace Museum, Taipei) and Myriad Ravines with Wind in the Pines (Shanghai Museum). The second type is based single extant works. Sleeping Gibbon is based on a painting attributed to the Song dynasty painter Muxi, Sleeping Gibbon on a Rock (Fukuoka Art Museum), and Emperor Xuanzong Enjoying a Cool Breeze is a direct copy of Hashimoto Kansetsu's Song of Unending Sorrow (Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art). The third type involves original creation based on textual records of an artist's style or extant paintings. Examples are Through Ancient Eyes (Metropolitan Museum of Art) signed as Shitao and the aforementioned Listening, signed as Zhao Yong.

The inscriptions, signature, and date on the present landscape signed as Kuncan have all been copied from Kuncan's Immortals' Abode at the Palace Museum in Beijing, while the composition, and especially the distant mountains, somewhat resembles Hermitage in the Mountains in the Shanghai Museum. The middle and foreground recall the styles of Dong Yuan and Juran. This painting exhibits many traces of Zhang Daqian's style. The most obvious is the final two characters yuanwu in the inscribed poem, which fit squarely into Zhang's personal style. He begins the inscription in Kuncan's calligraphic style, but as he proceeds he unconsciously and gradually defaults to his own. In the date and the signature, he restrains himself and reverts back to Kuncan's style. The texture strokes and the use of blues and ochres, which make the mountains appear lush and articulate the boulders, resemble works that Zhang painted on Mount Qingcheng in the 1940's, including Wei River and Village of the Elderly. Moreover, the orderly composition of the present landscape is devoid of Kuncan's wild, untrammeled brushwork.

Scenery of Chao River (lot 1117) is based on an original Shitao painting in at the Tianjin Art Museum, and is identical to it in composition, inscription texts, and calligraphic and painting styles. However, the colors in the present painting are less saturated, and certain details are more refined, such as the waves in the lake, the rendition of the temple, and the divisions in the foreground fields. Whether a forgery by Zhang Daqian or not, the present painting was clearly created by someone with a profound understanding of Shitao's art and especially his calligraphy. The inscription is self-consistent and as fluidly executed as an authentic work, effortlessly channeling Shitao. Some of the pigment application and the dotting on the mountains resemble the Kuncan-signed work (lot 1116).

Fisherman (lot 1118), though bearing Wu Zhen's signature, does not resemble any known painting by him. In brushwork, composition, and inscription, it is in fact different from any Wu Zhen paintings recorded in the Illustrated Catalogue of Selected Works of Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy. This might be one of Zhang Daqian's imaginative forgeries, like the Zhao Yong-signed Listening.

The seal impressions on Zhang Daqian's forged antique paintings are noteworthy. The exhibition catalogue Challenging the Past: the Paintings of Chang Dai-chien mentions that Zhang owned at least 970 forged seals, the majority of which were attributed to Ming and Qing dynasty collectors. For example, he had over a hundred forged Xiang Yuanbian seals. [2] During his time, forgers had mastered the method of reproducing a seal by photographing it and etching it on a zinc plate. This method produced near-identical copies, but they can still be detected upon close observation because the metal takes on seal paste and impress on paper differently than soft stones (from which most Ming and Qing seals were made). In the three paintings in question, the impressions of the artist seals show unnatural white spots, an awkward flatness, and unusually bright tonality. The Bada Shanren eleven-leaf Album of Flowers, Birds, Insects, and Fish and its Zhang Daqian-forged counterpart, extremely similar and both in the Freer-Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C., provide a useful reference. Zhang's brushwork is more fluid and at times even overly sweet, whereas the brushwork in Bada's original is more hesitant and conscientious (in a good way). Zhang's seal impressions on the calligraphic leaves are more orderly than Bada's. Most importantly, the former impressions have the same unnaturalness and awkwardness as evidenced in the previous three paintings.

There are many theories surrounding the motivations behind Zhang Daqian's forgeries, but in any case it is clear that they evolved in observable stages. Most remarkably, Zhang devoted himself to the study of classical paintings. From brushwork to color to composition, from prose and poetic inscription to signature, from paper and seals to mounting, everything he did adhered to traditional standards. How else could he escape detection by so many experts? The Chinese painting tradition emphasized innovation through copying past masters. In all his works, Zhang Daqian connected past and present. Was his playfulness not a bridge between us and the ancients?

[1] Chang Dai-chien in California, Fine Arts Center, San Francisco State University, 1999, pp. 114, 115
[2] Shen C. Y. Fu, Challenging the Past: The Paintings of Chang Dai-chien, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D. C., 1991, p. 38