T his September, Sotheby's Fine Chinese Paintings department proudly presents Chang Dai-chien’s masterpiece, The Giant Lotuses, a work that propelled the artist to international prominence.

Created in 1960, this work is a six-panel painting executed on prestigious mediums -- six sheets of large Qianlong paper and Wu Tianzhang ink from the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Standing over three meters tall and eight meters wide, it is by far the largest known work created by the artist. It was so monumental in size that the artist had to build a newer and larger studio specifically for its creation.

In the painting, vibrant lotuses unfurl across the water, reaching toward the sky, swaying gracefully in the breeze. It conveys a sense of dynamic movement that reflects the artist's bold and expressive spirit. In 1961, The Giant Lotuses made its debut at Musée Cernuschi, where it garnered critical acclaim. Chang described this as his “world-renowned moment.” Following this success, this work was featured later that year in the Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil. In 1963, it was exhibited at the Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York, where it was acquired by The Reader's Digest Collection.

In 1982, it was auctioned at Sotheby's New York and subsequently acquired by The Compensation for Clumsiness Studio, where it has since remained unseen in public. Now, 60 years after its exhibition in Europe and the Americas, The Giant Lotuses is finally making its long-awaited debut in Asia.

splashed ink and colour on paper, set of six hanging scrolls
signed Shuren Zhang Daqian, dated Gengzi (1960), the eleventh lunar month, with four seals of the artist
358 x 793.4 cm 141 x 312 ½ in.

Exhibited

• Paris, Musée Cernuschi, Les Lotus Géants: Grandes Compositions De Tchang Ta-Ts'ien, May 17 to June 19, 1961
• Sao Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna, VI Bienal de Sao paulo, September to December 1961
• New York, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Exhibition of Paintings by Chang Dai-chien, October 22 to November 2, 1963

Illustrated

• Les Lotus Géants: Grandes Compositions De Tchang Ta-Ts'ien, Musée Cernuschi, Paris, May 1961, exhibit no.2
• VI Bienal de Sao Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, September 1961, listed as Chang Dai-chien’s exhibit no.1
• Exhibition of Paintings by Chang Dai-chien, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1963, listed in the exhibition catalogue, exhibit no. 42
• The World of Chang Dai-chien, Taipei, Credit News, May 1968 (first edition), image 2
• The Paintings of Chang Dai-chien, 1950-1983; From Traditionalism to Modernism, Xizhitang Publishing Co., Ltd., Sept 2019, p. 40

Provenance

• The Reader's Digest Collection
• Sotheby’s New York, Fine Chinese Works of Art and Paintings, June 4, 1982
• Collection of The Compensation for Clumsiness Studio
  

In April 1956, Chang Dai-chien held a solo exhibition in Japan titled “Chang Dai-chien Dunhuang Cave Mural Studies”, showcasing nearly 40 works from his trips to the Dunhuang grottoes. The exhibition attracted a large crowd and received widespread acclaim. At the time, Vadime Elisseeff, director of Musée Cernuschi, was travelling in Tokyo. He visited the exhibition, and was deeply impressed and personally invited the artist to hold a solo exhibition in Paris.

The following month, Chang travelled to Europe for the first time to organize his first solo exhibition. Under Elisseeff’s curation, the artist’s copies of the Dunhuang murals were displayed at the Musée Cernuschi, along with his own collection of ancient Chinese paintings, while over at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, more than 60 of Chang's recent works were concurrently exhibited. The exhibitions showcased the artist's diverse and evolving brushwork styles to European audiences, attracted significant media coverage and struck a notable impact on the Western art scene. In the next year, he even met with Pablo Picasso, exchanging works as mementos, creating a notable story in the international art scene. In the autumn of 1959, Vadime Elisseeff met with Chang again in Paris. Upon learning that Chang was at the time shifting from meticulous brushwork to exploring abstract ink splashes, Elisseeff strongly invited Chang to return to Paris to hold a major splashed ink painting exhibition.

Full of ambition, the artist seized this opportunity to make a breakthrough and leave his mark on the Western art scene. He spared no expense in creating a large-scale splashed painting of lotus flowers. Chang invited his friend, photojournalist Wang Zhiyi, to document each step throughout the process. In his later book, My Friend Chang Dai-chien, Wang elaborated on witnessing Chang's preparation and the process of painting this six-panel masterpiece.

Chang often said, “My dining table is large, my painting table is large, but my studio is not large enough.” Now, to create a monumental painting of The Giant Lotuses, he felt that his current studio was inadequate and so he wanted to build a new, larger one. He believed in taking action immediately; if he thought of something, he would want to start right away. He wished he could construct a studio overnight. As for how much it would cost to build or whether his bank savings were sufficient, these “small” issues were never a concern to him.

While Chang oversaw the construction of the new studio, he would spend several hours each morning and evening wandering by the newly created lotus pond. Sometimes he would sit by the pond, deep in thought; although painting lotus flowers was his forte, this time he made a special effort to observe them closely.

When the large studio was completed, it measured 20 metres long, 10 metres wide and two storeys high. From a distance, it resembled a big warehouse, but up close, it had an elegant roof resembling that of a palace. On the ground floor, there were bedrooms flanking either side, with the furthest room being Huang Min's framing studio. Upstairs, aside from a few storage rooms, there was a large carpeted studio. At the far end on the right of the studio stood a large painting table. The studio was void of decorations, empty like a small playground where one might see children joyously chase each other and roll around.

After Chang settled in, he called all his family members to help grind and pour the prepared ink into a large basin and took out sheets of paper from the storage room to lay on the floor, beginning to plan his painting of giant lotuses, which he had already thought about for a long time.

One afternoon, Chang rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and began pouring the prepared ink onto the paper bowl by bowl. It looked quite intimidating, and I watched anxiously, unable to imagine how to handle it. After splashing the ink, he locked the studio door, forbidding anyone from entering or moving around, allowing it to dry naturally. This whole process took just over half an hour. Chang then went downstairs to sip tea from a covered bowl, remaining silent and deep in thought with a serious demeanour. It was clear he was contemplating how to deal with the ink splashes he had just created.

The usually talkative Chang had suddenly become quiet; his mood was heavy, and his expression serious, quite different from his usual amiable self. Since his eye ailment Chang could no longer do meticulous brushwork, thus his painting style had changed dramatically. His current grand and imposing paintings required not just vision but also intuition. The preparatory work for this large painting had already been laid out.

The next morning, when we opened the studio, the splashed ink and xuan paper were all crumpled together. Chang calmly organized each sheet of xuan paper, then poured bowls of stone green ink over them, closing the door again for the day. This continued for several days, with no clear outcome; the new carpet was marked with ink stains in various places. Chang paid no mind to these, focusing solely on his work.

A few days later, Madam Chang Hsu Wen-po and Paul Chang lifted the ink-splashed xuan paper onto the painting table one by one. Chang then used a brush to connect each ink splash, adding lotus flowers here and there, eventually joining the six sheets of paper together to create a complete composition of the giant lotuses painting.

Now The Giant Lotuses was completed, and everyone sighed of relief. Madam Chang said, “Next time we paint such a large work, it would be best to have a machine made for grinding ink! Watching you pour it bowl by bowl, you seem completely unaffected, but you have no idea about the hardships of the ink grinder. My hands ache from the effort, and it's quite a struggle; this task is truly not easy.”

Chang laughed and said, “Actually, ink is manufactured in both China and Japan, but I'm not comfortable with the chemical materials they use. Sometimes paintings with poor ink can easily smear during the mounting process, ruining the artwork – wouldn't that negate all the effort? So please bear with the hard work!”

After The Giant Lotuses was completed, Chang returned to his usual self and continued his lively chatter. Observing him, I noticed he had lost at least five kilograms, and his beard had turned noticeably whiter. However, his cheerful mood compensated for the hardships of the past few days. I captured every step of the painting process on camera, which I later took to France for a rare exhibition of this artwork. When producing the catalogue, I included photos of the painting process.

When Chang Dai-chien created this piece, he spared no expense, using "Qianlong inner treasury paper and Wu Tianzhang ink." Wu Tianzhang was a renowned ink maker from Anhui during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, celebrated alongside Cao Sugong and Wu Shoumo for his high-quality inks. Daqian’s choice of Wu's ink reflects his meticulous craftsmanship, often noted in his inscriptions, highlighting his preference for this exceptional material. In the 1968 book, "The World of Chang Dai-chien" by Xie Jiaxiao, a reporter for Taiwan’s “Credit News,” the artist's choices of materials are recorded:

Like washi paper, ink also improves with age because the ink made by ancient artisans was finely ground with appropriate amounts of glue. However, modern ink production has not sought improvement; instead, rather, it has become coarse and poorly made. The glue used is heavy and murky, and they even use foreign materials, or worse, soot from chimneys – how can such ink be used for painting?......

It is said that Chang used a Ming-era ink block for those six large lotus paintings. That block of Ming-era ink was worth US$150, equivalent to NT$6,000, and it was completely used up on that one painting.

In May 1961, Chang returned to the Musée Cernuschi, where the six-panel The Giant Lotuses made its official debut. Also on display was the 1945 work Lotus in Ink a four-panel screen (currently in the Collection of Museum of History in Taipei). In the exhibition preface, museum director Vadime Elisseeff stated:

Chang sought to surpass his 1945 work, Lotus in Ink, by creating an even larger piece in 1961 that emphasised the spirit and brushwork of abstract expression. The completed work comprises six panels, spanning 8 metres wide and 3.6 metres high. Its uniqueness lies in its theme; before us is not an expansive landscape, but rather a pond of lotus flowers. The lotus symbolises the spirit of rising from the mud without becoming stained, and it is the artist's favorite plant – only through meticulous understanding can such a magnificent image be created.

It is quite interesting to juxtapose this masterpiece with the 1945 Lotus in Ink. The comparison helps clarify the artist's artistic journey over the past 15 years: a simplification of colour and bold composition that can no longer be balanced by inscriptions, as the painting itself is full of tension. The contrast between these two works also reveals the long-standing Chinese tradition of viewing painting as a living and evolving entity. The artist strives to avoid embellishment upon completing a work, yet he retains the right to refine it years later. Similarly, in 1961, Chang reinterpreted his 1945 piece, bringing a fresh perspective.

Although this reinterpretation and comparison show significant differences in the techniques of the two works – where the latter emphasises solid line work over colour – the evolution of his style is clear.

The exhibition was a great success, and The Giant Lotuses shocked Western audiences, breaking free from the conventional image of Chinese painting. In the fashion capital of Paris, this exhibition also linked Chinese art with global trends, featuring fashion models posing for photographs in front of the painting, which were published in the fashion magazine Vogue. Chang Dai-chien also remarked that after the exhibition, he had “become famous worldwide!”

Chang originally intended to take The Giant Lotuses on a tour across various European countries before returning to Asia for further exhibitions. However, the success of the Paris exhibition garnered international attention, leading the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo to invite the artist to participate in the Bienal de São Paulo with The Giant Lotuses.

Shortly after the exhibition in Brazil, Hirschl & Adler Gallery in New York also invited Chang to hold an exhibition, expanding into the North American market. In 1963, The Giant Lotuses headlined Chang’s first solo exhibition in the United States and was purchased by the Reader’s Digest Association. It was said to be sold for USD140,000 at that time.

In the book The Later Life of Chang Dai-chien by the esteemed journalist Huang Tiancai reflects on the artist's insights:

Chang Dai-chien was very happy to know that all the paintings had sold out, as this indicated that Americans were beginning to appreciate traditional Chinese ink painting. However, he felt a bit "regretful" about The Giant Lotuses being purchased by a private collector. He had used six large pieces of Qianlong-era paper, a block of Ming-era ink, and even specially built a large studio for this piece, pouring in a great deal of thought and effort to complete it. He had originally planned to tour it around various countries in Europe, then exhibit it in North and South America, and finally bring it back to Asia to show in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other places. Unexpectedly, it only appeared in Paris, São Paulo, and New York before being bought by a collector, leaving the artist with a sense of loss……

Chang explained to me that his intention in creating The Giant Lotuses was not to make money; he primarily wanted to introduce traditional Chinese ink painting to foreigners. By painting such a large piece, he aimed to attract the attention and appreciation of Western audiences. The Giant Lotuses had already made a splash in exhibitions across Europe and North and South America, receiving overwhelming reviews, which made him very happy. The exhibition in New York was not part of his original plans; when Adler invited him to exhibit, he was surprised that all the artworks sold out, and The Giant Lotuses fetched such a high price. Moreover, the buyer was an important figure in America’s cultural scene. All of this was the gallery's “talent” and “merit”. Traditional Chinese ink painting had finally gained recognition in the Western art world……

In 1982, the work was sold at Sotheby's New York, acquired into the collection of The Compensation for Clumsiness Studio, where it has remained in the West and never publicly seen again. Until now.