Lot 83

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE AMERICAN COLLECTION (LOTS 79-84)Hu Hui Chun was born in 1911 in Beijing; in later years, he changed his given name to Jen Mou. The eldest son of the influential banker Hu Chun, J.M. Hu was raised in an elegant private residence amongst his many stepbrothers and stepsisters. In keeping with tradition, he was given a rigorous background in the Chinese classics; more unusually, this was supplemented by a Western-style education, as well. He frst encountered Chinese ceramics during his student years, when he purchased a nineteenth-century brush-washer for his desk. This initial foray into collecting would become emblematic of J.M. Hu’s poignant relationship with art: even amidst the upheavals of war and the evolution of his collection, the modest brush-washer stayed with him until his death in 1995. J.M. Hu’s boyhood studies within the Chinese literati tradition greatly informed his philosophical approach to life and collecting: humble and erudite, he consistently affrmed that it was the visceral connection between a collector and his acquisitions that was of essential importance. True value, in J.M. Hu’s estimation, lay far beyond monetary worth.J.M. Hu’s collection of Chinese ceramics provided abundant opportunity for personal scholarship and historical investigation. As early as the 1940s, he longed for a welcoming social environment where like-minded collectors could share and discuss art and objects. Two decades later, he established the Min Chiu Society in Hong Kong alongside fellow collectors K.P. Chen and J.S. Lee. A noted cultural philanthropist, J.M. Hu gifted substantial groupings from his collection to the Shanghai Museum in 1950 and 1989; many of these objects remain on view in the museum’s Zande Lou Gallery. The collector also arranged to have his family’s set of imperial zitan furniture sent to the National Palace Museum in Taipei for display, and returned the important Siming version of the Huashan Temple stele rubbing to the Palace Museum, Beijing.

BIAN DING (ATTRIBUTED TO, YUAN-MING DYNASTY)

Houseboat

Details

BIAN DING (ATTRIBUTED TO, YUAN-MING DYNASTY)
Houseboat
Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper
35 5/8 x 10 in. (90.5 x 25.4 cm.)
Inscribed and signed, with two seals of the artist
Three colophons inscribed by Wang Wenzhi, Tang Su, and Xu Ben, with a total of four seals
One collector's seal

Provenance

J.M. Hu (1911-1995) Collection, and thence by descent.

Literature

James Cahill, An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: Tang, Sung, Yuan, Berkeley, 1980, p 317.

Brought to you by

Elizabeth Hammer

nychinesepaintings@christies.com +1 212 636 2195

Lot Essay

Bian Ding, who used the art name Wenjing, was a military man from Longxi in Gansu province. Little is known about his life, other than that he was considered a talented calligrapher. Xu Ben (1335-1380) was an accomplished painter and poet from Suzhou, who spent the end of the Yuan dynasty as a scholar-hermit. Tang Su (ca. 1328-ca. 1371), a native of Zhejiang, was a government official who was also an accomplished painter, calligrapher and poet.

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