100's

[wgeoff]

My effort this weekend is in the 100's - but I only have three bottles to show, birds, boys and butterflies. So I'll do them in that order.

My birds are easy to identify - Tree Sparrows, a common urban species throughout most of China but here seen in a rice field





Quite well painted, a 1994 bottle with signature Shi Chuan? Peter's database says Shi Chuan is Lu Chuan, a painter I have met on my last posting and see below.

My second bottle I may have shown before some time ago, but I can't find the details so I'm putting it up again here - 100 Boys




A 1994 bottle, I've recorded it as by Wen Fang or Liu Huifeng, a student of Wang Qian. Hope that's correct. 

Finally the butterflies. When looking up Lu Chuan (or Lu Guofeng) on Peter's database, I found these photos, annotated from Mr Tai whose shop was located at Ocean Terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.



In front of the artist and on the bottle pictures are two bottles, one Four Seasons of Birds which I showed a very similar version of last week, and the other 100 Butterflies



and here is my version




I was aware that some artists repeated their successful designs, and this must be an example.
I'm also sure I must have bought both the Four Seasons of Birds, the 100 Birds and the 100 Butterflies from Mr Tai. I remember buying the Butterflies there.

We discussed some time ago whether the artists painted 'real' butterflies or just their imagination. I sent a copy of these 100 Butterfly photos to a knowledgeable guy, and he confirmed - beautiful paintings but all imaginary, no exactly identifiable species.

So, Lu Chuan knows his birds but not his butterflies. 

[George]

What a wonderful topic and beautiful paintings.

The one bottle is actually One Hundred Children At Play scene..

I have some silk screen pics but can not post until my computer returns.

Great topic... Thanks for sharing !

[misfit38]

Thank you for sharing, I like the butterfly one the most, but they are all lovely.

Kaz

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Geoff,
    Very nice bottles. Thank you for posting them.
Joey

[Peter Bentley 彭达理]

Hi  Geoff

Some  very  interesting  postings !

Also   good to see  someone    using  my  data  base   before  posting  and/or  asking  questions  about   Modern  artists (at  long  last.... !    )

The   DB closes  the  loop  on  a  lot  of the   different  names   artists  use (original  name  /  name     adopted  later  in life  /  various  pen  names   used  at  different  periods /  name  used  as  "master"  of   a  studio  / etc)   and  because  I  have  sourced  information  from  several different  art books  -   some of  which   are  only  in Chinese  and therefore  difficult  for   non- Chinese  to read  - I have  been  able to   cross-check  the  information.

The  new  Ji School  Book contains  a  wealth  of  accurate   data  on  names , but  it is  all  in Chinese. It  took me   about   3  days    working   with  my  PA  to  pull  out  all the   name  data  and  get the  names into  correct  Pin Yin .  Plus  at  least  another  week to  encode  it all into the   DB .

Cheers
Peter

PS : I once a   100 x  Children  by Liu Shouben  dated   2001   which I  bought  at a  Bonhams   auction  in HK,  but  I  decided to  sell it  because there  are  serious   questions  about who  actually  painted   LSB's  bottles  after  about  2000,  which is   roughly  when  LSB started   signing  on his    students'  bottles . Long  story ...  but basically    it  was noticed  in the   early 2000's   by the   S'Pore  collectors  that   far too many  LSB  bottles  were  being  sold  in S'Pore  for  them  all to have  been  painted  personally  by  LSB.   This  would   also  explain   why   there's  hardly a  single  Jing  School artist  of  any  fame to  have emerged   since  about  2000 -  LSB  did not allow them  to  paint  in  their   own names,  so  eventually   I guess  they   almost   all   gave  up  painting .
Do a   search  in the   DB  of  all  artists   with the   School   code  {B}  =   the   Jing  School . It's    staggering to  see how  few there  are,   especially compared   with the  literally   hundreds  of  Ji School   artists  =  code  {J}

PPS : My  only 100 x    bottle  now  is   100  x   turtles  ( or tortoises) -  I only  bought  it  because  it  was  so  unusual !