Lot Essay
(US$64,100-76,900)
Gong Xian, the best known of the late seventeenth-century painters in Nanjing, was born in Kushan but spent most of his life in the vicinity of the southern capital. A well-known figure in Nanjing intellectual circles, his long-lost compilation of poetry - the Xiang Cao Tang Ji - has recently been discovered. The poetry he wrote, including ci poems in this handscroll, and the circle of friends he kept indicate Gong Xian to be an ardent Ming loyalist in the face of the Manchu conquest of China - a political stance which forced him into ten years of wandering before returning to the Nanjing area in 1655. Gong Xian spent the remaining years of his life eking out a living through painting and teaching.
Gong Xian, the best known of the late seventeenth-century painters in Nanjing, was born in Kushan but spent most of his life in the vicinity of the southern capital. A well-known figure in Nanjing intellectual circles, his long-lost compilation of poetry - the Xiang Cao Tang Ji - has recently been discovered. The poetry he wrote, including ci poems in this handscroll, and the circle of friends he kept indicate Gong Xian to be an ardent Ming loyalist in the face of the Manchu conquest of China - a political stance which forced him into ten years of wandering before returning to the Nanjing area in 1655. Gong Xian spent the remaining years of his life eking out a living through painting and teaching.