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Slave and lion , by Odie on May 22, 2021 21:54:26 GMT 1, www.mutualart.com/Article/Slave-and-Lion--A-Painting-That-Changed-/2C4320530EABA323
Slave and Lion: A Painting That Changed the Course of Chinese Art History
Aihua Zhou Pearce /MutualArt
MAY 21, 2021
Christie’s Hong Kong will auction Xu Beihong’s masterpiece Slave and Lion in a standalone auction on May 24, 2021 It is likely to become the most expensive Chinese figurative painting — again.
Xu Beihong, Slave and Lion, painted in 1924. Courtesy of Christie's
Xu Beihong, one of the most important Chinese artists of all time, is once again captivating headlines.
Beihong was born in Yixing in the Jiangsu province in China in 1895. His father was a literato, a teacher and a traditional Chinese painter. Under his guidance, six-year-old Xu began his studies of traditional painting, calligraphy and Chinese literature, and at age seventeen, he began teaching art in local schools. By the time he was twenty-three he was hired by the principal of the Peking University to teach figurative painting. On March 20, 1919, Beihong set sail for Paris to study Western realist art with the aim of reforming Chinese painting.
During his eight years in the West, Xu entered Académie Julian to study figurative drawing; he became the first Chinese artist to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts where he studied with François Flameng; he became a pupil of the academic realist Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret and formed a close friendship with him; and he also came to admire the neoclassical artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s drawings and paintings.
In 1923, Beihong’s painting Old Lady was selected by The Société des Artistes Français — Xu was the first Chinese artist to be chosen — and displayed in the annual exhibition, and in 1927 a total of nine of his paintings were selected. In 1924, the first large-scale exhibition by Chinese artists in the West featured four of his paintings. In 1927, finally, Xu presented Slave and Lion to the Beaux-Arts as his chef-d’oeuvre — the culmination of his studies.
Courtesy of Beijing Xu Beihong Memorial Museum
In Slave and Lion Xu used all the techniques that he had learned in the West to tell Pliny’s famous story of a helpless slave’s encounter with a wild lion which was in agony from a thorn stuck in his paw. Overcoming his fear, the slave removed the thorn and relieved the lion from his pain. Years later, the slave was thrown to the lions in the arena, only to be met by the same grateful lion who remembered the slave’s help and left him unscathed. The injured and helpless lion embodies dignity and self-respect, while the horrified and frightened slave clenching his fists represents the spirit of fortitude.
In the painting, Beihong transmits the message that respect, kindness and compassion are an essential part of human nature, this theme being closely related to the Confucian education Xu had received in his childhood, and one he would revisit many times. According to Zhuang Jun, a senior expert in the department of contemporary art at Christie’s Asia Pacific, this is Xu’s first oil painting created based on compassion, and it is also the largest of his oil paintings still held in a private collection. Jun believes that he used the story to conflate the present with the past, and to inspire the Chinese national spirit.
In addition to the importance of its subject, the painting reveals that Xu was in a tangled state of mind, torn between concepts of Western aesthetic and Chinese tradition. The slave is almost entirely naked, yet nude depictions of the male body had never been seen before in Chinese figurative painting and uncovered flesh was shameful in this particularly traditional society. Painting the nude must have been challenging for Xu, who had received a traditional education and valued his Chinese “face” more than his life. However, as an important aspect of Western idealism, he felt compelled to introduce it to Chinese painting. His inner struggle is clearly visible in his sketches for the work. In the pencil sketch, a piece of cloth tightly surrounds the slave’s hips and is knotted to cover his groin. In the charcoal sketch the cloth simply wraps the area, and his hand holds a corner of the cloth. In the final oil painting, however, Xu simply painted red strips of cloth around the slave’s genitals, which still remain visible. Red is the favored color of the Chinese nation and a symbol of the Chinese spirit, first seen in the Tang Dynasty’s tomb paintings one and a half millennia ago. Xu was balancing his Chinese image and his desire to transform his country’s art.
Courtesy of Beijing Xu Beihong Memorial Museum
In addition to its economic, artistic and historic value as a work of art, the provenance of the painting is also extraordinary. In 1927, Xu returned to China with the painting during the turbulent civil wars that wracked the country. Between 1939 and 1941, in order to support the Anti-Japanese War, he held exhibitions in Singapore, India, and Malaysia, including Slave and Lion. But in 1941, the Pacific War broke out, and, after the fall of Singapore, Xu was unable to bring his treasured paintings back home. He entrusted them to the care of friends who buried them in a dry well at the Chong Boon Secondary School in Singapore, and they were subsequently lost. According to the memories of Xu’s wife Liao Jingwen, Slave and Lion was one of about 40 lost works which were extremely precious to Xu. After the Second World War ended, he searched for the paintings, but to no avail. Only three of the missing works were eventually recovered: an oil sketch of The Foolish Man Who Removed the Mountains, the oil painting Put Down Your Whip, and Slave and Lion.
After Beihong returned to China in 1927, he began actively promoting the reform of Chinese figurative art, meanwhile continuing to create paintings based on traditional myths and fables, now exploring the Chinese canon. In his short fifty-eight years he cultivated a following of outstanding students and transformed Chinese representational figurative painting. Today there are a vast number of scholarly books and studies about Xu and his art. Three universities and high schools are named after him, and there are three Xu Beihong museums in China: in Beijing, in his hometown Yixing, and in Chongqing. He has been described as ‘the great master of Chinese realist painting,’ ‘the founder of Chinese modern art education,’ and ‘the father of the modern Chinese representational painting.’
Slave and Lion was initially purchased by Indonesian collectors and after several years of restoration in Switzerland, it was auctioned at Christie’s Hong Kong on November 26, 2006, for HK$53.9 million ($6.9 million), then a world record for a painting by a Chinese artist. This time around it is estimated to sell for $350 - HK$450 million (approximately $45 million - $58 million).
media.mutualart.com/Images/Articles/05_2021/20/3ec06fbd-94ea-4f3a-8645-81e482651128-Capture.Jpeg
www.mutualart.com/Article/Slave-and-Lion--A-Painting-That-Changed-/2C4320530EABA323Slave and Lion: A Painting That Changed the Course of Chinese Art History Aihua Zhou Pearce /MutualArt MAY 21, 2021 Christie’s Hong Kong will auction Xu Beihong’s masterpiece Slave and Lion in a standalone auction on May 24, 2021 It is likely to become the most expensive Chinese figurative painting — again. Xu Beihong, Slave and Lion, painted in 1924. Courtesy of Christie's Xu Beihong, one of the most important Chinese artists of all time, is once again captivating headlines. Beihong was born in Yixing in the Jiangsu province in China in 1895. His father was a literato, a teacher and a traditional Chinese painter. Under his guidance, six-year-old Xu began his studies of traditional painting, calligraphy and Chinese literature, and at age seventeen, he began teaching art in local schools. By the time he was twenty-three he was hired by the principal of the Peking University to teach figurative painting. On March 20, 1919, Beihong set sail for Paris to study Western realist art with the aim of reforming Chinese painting. During his eight years in the West, Xu entered Académie Julian to study figurative drawing; he became the first Chinese artist to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts where he studied with François Flameng; he became a pupil of the academic realist Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret and formed a close friendship with him; and he also came to admire the neoclassical artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s drawings and paintings. In 1923, Beihong’s painting Old Lady was selected by The Société des Artistes Français — Xu was the first Chinese artist to be chosen — and displayed in the annual exhibition, and in 1927 a total of nine of his paintings were selected. In 1924, the first large-scale exhibition by Chinese artists in the West featured four of his paintings. In 1927, finally, Xu presented Slave and Lion to the Beaux-Arts as his chef-d’oeuvre — the culmination of his studies. Courtesy of Beijing Xu Beihong Memorial Museum In Slave and Lion Xu used all the techniques that he had learned in the West to tell Pliny’s famous story of a helpless slave’s encounter with a wild lion which was in agony from a thorn stuck in his paw. Overcoming his fear, the slave removed the thorn and relieved the lion from his pain. Years later, the slave was thrown to the lions in the arena, only to be met by the same grateful lion who remembered the slave’s help and left him unscathed. The injured and helpless lion embodies dignity and self-respect, while the horrified and frightened slave clenching his fists represents the spirit of fortitude. In the painting, Beihong transmits the message that respect, kindness and compassion are an essential part of human nature, this theme being closely related to the Confucian education Xu had received in his childhood, and one he would revisit many times. According to Zhuang Jun, a senior expert in the department of contemporary art at Christie’s Asia Pacific, this is Xu’s first oil painting created based on compassion, and it is also the largest of his oil paintings still held in a private collection. Jun believes that he used the story to conflate the present with the past, and to inspire the Chinese national spirit. In addition to the importance of its subject, the painting reveals that Xu was in a tangled state of mind, torn between concepts of Western aesthetic and Chinese tradition. The slave is almost entirely naked, yet nude depictions of the male body had never been seen before in Chinese figurative painting and uncovered flesh was shameful in this particularly traditional society. Painting the nude must have been challenging for Xu, who had received a traditional education and valued his Chinese “face” more than his life. However, as an important aspect of Western idealism, he felt compelled to introduce it to Chinese painting. His inner struggle is clearly visible in his sketches for the work. In the pencil sketch, a piece of cloth tightly surrounds the slave’s hips and is knotted to cover his groin. In the charcoal sketch the cloth simply wraps the area, and his hand holds a corner of the cloth. In the final oil painting, however, Xu simply painted red strips of cloth around the slave’s genitals, which still remain visible. Red is the favored color of the Chinese nation and a symbol of the Chinese spirit, first seen in the Tang Dynasty’s tomb paintings one and a half millennia ago. Xu was balancing his Chinese image and his desire to transform his country’s art. Courtesy of Beijing Xu Beihong Memorial Museum In addition to its economic, artistic and historic value as a work of art, the provenance of the painting is also extraordinary. In 1927, Xu returned to China with the painting during the turbulent civil wars that wracked the country. Between 1939 and 1941, in order to support the Anti-Japanese War, he held exhibitions in Singapore, India, and Malaysia, including Slave and Lion. But in 1941, the Pacific War broke out, and, after the fall of Singapore, Xu was unable to bring his treasured paintings back home. He entrusted them to the care of friends who buried them in a dry well at the Chong Boon Secondary School in Singapore, and they were subsequently lost. According to the memories of Xu’s wife Liao Jingwen, Slave and Lion was one of about 40 lost works which were extremely precious to Xu. After the Second World War ended, he searched for the paintings, but to no avail. Only three of the missing works were eventually recovered: an oil sketch of The Foolish Man Who Removed the Mountains, the oil painting Put Down Your Whip, and Slave and Lion. After Beihong returned to China in 1927, he began actively promoting the reform of Chinese figurative art, meanwhile continuing to create paintings based on traditional myths and fables, now exploring the Chinese canon. In his short fifty-eight years he cultivated a following of outstanding students and transformed Chinese representational figurative painting. Today there are a vast number of scholarly books and studies about Xu and his art. Three universities and high schools are named after him, and there are three Xu Beihong museums in China: in Beijing, in his hometown Yixing, and in Chongqing. He has been described as ‘the great master of Chinese realist painting,’ ‘the founder of Chinese modern art education,’ and ‘the father of the modern Chinese representational painting.’ Slave and Lion was initially purchased by Indonesian collectors and after several years of restoration in Switzerland, it was auctioned at Christie’s Hong Kong on November 26, 2006, for HK$53.9 million ($6.9 million), then a world record for a painting by a Chinese artist. This time around it is estimated to sell for $350 - HK$450 million (approximately $45 million - $58 million). media.mutualart.com/Images/Articles/05_2021/20/3ec06fbd-94ea-4f3a-8645-81e482651128-Capture.Jpeg
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