Album leaf mounted on board, now circular, perhaps reduced from a composition originally square or rectangular. The painting depicts a gentleman dressed in loose robes, holding a staff and seated on a rock beneath three tall, gnarled pine trees with rough, textured trunks, their spreading, twisted branches bearing finely delineated needles. A river with a narrow spit of land and the further riverbank are visible behind the figure.
Ink and colours on silk, mounted on board, framed
Anonymous
Provenance:
Yamanaka and Company, New York.
Stephen Junkunc III, Chicago.
Eskenazi Limited, London.
Mr and Mrs S. Feinberg, Boston and by descent.
Exhibited:
London, 2009, Eskenazi Limited.
London, 2019, Eskenazi Limited.
Published:
Christie’s, New York, Fine Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy, 27 March 1996, number 13.
Eskenazi Limited, Seven Classical Chinese Paintings, London, 2009, number 4.
Eskenazi Limited, Room for study: fifty scholars’ objects, London 2019, number 41.
Similar example:
National Palace Museum, Masterpieces of Chinese Album Painting in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, 1971, plate 38, for a fan-shaped album leaf attributed to Sheng Mao, showing a figure in a boat under a tree.
The artist, collector and connoisseur Wang Jiqian (Wang Chi-Ch’ien, C.C. Wang, 1907 - 2003) believed the painting in the present exhibition attributable to ‘the hand of Sheng Mao’ (active c. 1310 - 1360).