Christie’s to offer Bada Shanren’s 1699 Flowers and Birds album in Hong Kong
The twelve-leaf album is estimated at HK$12m-18m. Its sale follows a Nanchang exhibition marking 400 years since the painter’s birth.
Christie’s will offer Bada Shanren’s Flowers and Birds, a twelve-leaf album dated 1699, in Hong Kong on 27 October. The estimate is HK$12m-18m.
Christie’s describes the ink-on-paper album as coming from an American private collection, with earlier ownership in the Tingfanlou and Dafengtang collections. The announcement does not name the current owner or set out a complete chain of dated transfers. Those named collections are useful provenance leads, rather than a substitute for the eventual lot entry.
The classical sale takes place at The Henderson on 27 October. Modern and contemporary ink follows on 28 October, including Li Keran’s Sailing in River Li, dated 1972, at HK$6.5m-8.5m. That work is offered from a Hong Kong private collection.
The Art Newspaper reports that the exhibition So Lofty the Spirit, So Eternal the Ink, marking 400 years since Bada Shanren’s birth, brings together 129 works from 22 institutions. It runs across the Jiangxi Provincial Museum and Bada Shanren Memorial Hall in Nanchang until 10 October.
The newspaper’s Xiaoyuan Cathy Fan places the artist’s present popularity alongside his changing critical reception. Alan Yeung, curator of Chinese painting and calligraphy at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, describes the attraction of abstraction, ambiguity and psychological tension for modern viewers. Deng Feng, a research fellow at the National Art Museum of China and a curatorial consultant to the exhibition, emphasises the force of the artist’s expression and solitude.
Christie’s will preview the paintings in Hong Kong from 22 to 27 October. The auction and the museum exhibition offer distinct encounters with Bada Shanren’s work: no evidence in either account places this particular album in the Nanchang exhibition.
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