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Lot Essay
The Legacy of Li Gonglin (1041-1106)
Li Gonglin was one of the most significant painters in Chinese history. He was part of an elite circle of Northern Song painters, poets and calligraphers, including Su Shi (1037-1101), Mi Fu (1051-1107) and Huang Tingjian (1045-1105). Li’s characteristic plain line drawing, or baimiao, was a consummate mastery of descriptive linear brushwork. Controlled, refined, and uniquely expressive, Li’s technical and stylistic legacy is preserved in only a handful of works. While extant paintings definitively from Li’s own hand are excruciatingly rare, Li’s artistic legacy resonated through the centuries following his death in 1106. The following two lots represent distinct but complimentary facets of Li’s artistic legacy.
The first of these two paintings Seven Worthies Crossing the Pass, depicts eminent figures of antiquity riding across a pass in the depths of winter: four on horseback, two on mules, and one astride an ox. While we cannot be certain of the identity of the seven riders, their cultural association with ideas of lofty virtue, implications of transcendence in their journey, and their popularity as a subject for scholar painters is unequivocally attested by written records. Moreover, the connection of this theme to Li Gonglin’s oeuvre is attested in colophon by Yuan connoisseur Ke Jiusi (1312-1365), on a work attributed to Li Tang (c.1050-1130) in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which states that Li painted the subject often.
The present painting includes several colophons by Qing scholar officials and collectors from the Jiangnan region, reproduced in full in the Chinese description of the painting in the present catalogue. Some of these Qing scholars attribute the work to an unknown Song dynasty follower of Li, while other unequivocally regard it as a genuine masterpiece by Li’s own hand. A more recent appraisal of the present painting was published by Richard Barnhart in Orientations in 2014, under the subtitle “a lost painting by Li Gonglin”.
The painting is a deftly executed, strikingly animated composition. As Barnhart notes, the interaction between figures in the present work echoes the interplay of gestures, glances and individualised expressions seen in Li Gonglin’s Classic of Filial Piety, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. However, in Barnhart’s appraisal, the closest parallel with Li’s accepted works is with Li’s Five Horses, a work recently rediscovered and now in the Tokyo National Museum (illustrated here, p 87). In Barnhart estimation: “Comparison of the head of the fifth groom in Li’s Five Horses with the second rider in the present scroll reveals further similarities of a kind that suggest a singular technique of drawing and shaping of a head.” (Barnhart, p.103).
The second of the following two lots illustrates a different aspect of Li’s legacy, as a full colour copy of Li’s Five Horses. The present version of Five Horses is clearly later in date than Seven Worthies Crossing the Pass. Moreover, it is an unequivocal homage to Li’s original masterpiece of eleventh century equestrian painting. However, there are incongruous, almost playful additions in the form of its frontispiece, signature and colophons.
The frontispiece that dominates the opening of scroll prominently displays an animated calligraphic title, with a signature of the tenth century Song calligrapher Gao Yi. This anachronism is further underscored by the addition of the signature of tenth century painter Zhao Yuanzhang, small and unassuming, at the very end of the painting. Very little is known of Zhao, and none of his works survive into the present. The signature and the frontispiece provide the viewer with anachronisms that test their knowledge of Song painting, as the putative inscriber and artist both predate Li Gonglin’s Five Horses by around a century. The various colophons explore the calligraphic styles of Yuan and Ming masters, and even the brushwork of the Qianlong emperor. Furthermore, the seals on the painting and frontispiece include impressions reproducing the seals of Song Emperor Huizong, as a further illustration that the artist behind the present work sought to reproduce a broad range of historical models.
Suffused with impactful colour, dextrous brush work, and experimental vigour, this work clearly comes from a masterful yet playful hand. It was quite possibly an exploratory work by a pre-eminent artist of the modern era, experimenting with the Li’s classical style, studying historic calligraphic and seal carving techniques, and perhaps even testing his viewers art historical knowledge through the addition of anachronistic signatures and inscriptions.
Li Gonglin was one of the most significant painters in Chinese history. He was part of an elite circle of Northern Song painters, poets and calligraphers, including Su Shi (1037-1101), Mi Fu (1051-1107) and Huang Tingjian (1045-1105). Li’s characteristic plain line drawing, or baimiao, was a consummate mastery of descriptive linear brushwork. Controlled, refined, and uniquely expressive, Li’s technical and stylistic legacy is preserved in only a handful of works. While extant paintings definitively from Li’s own hand are excruciatingly rare, Li’s artistic legacy resonated through the centuries following his death in 1106. The following two lots represent distinct but complimentary facets of Li’s artistic legacy.
The first of these two paintings Seven Worthies Crossing the Pass, depicts eminent figures of antiquity riding across a pass in the depths of winter: four on horseback, two on mules, and one astride an ox. While we cannot be certain of the identity of the seven riders, their cultural association with ideas of lofty virtue, implications of transcendence in their journey, and their popularity as a subject for scholar painters is unequivocally attested by written records. Moreover, the connection of this theme to Li Gonglin’s oeuvre is attested in colophon by Yuan connoisseur Ke Jiusi (1312-1365), on a work attributed to Li Tang (c.1050-1130) in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which states that Li painted the subject often.
The present painting includes several colophons by Qing scholar officials and collectors from the Jiangnan region, reproduced in full in the Chinese description of the painting in the present catalogue. Some of these Qing scholars attribute the work to an unknown Song dynasty follower of Li, while other unequivocally regard it as a genuine masterpiece by Li’s own hand. A more recent appraisal of the present painting was published by Richard Barnhart in Orientations in 2014, under the subtitle “a lost painting by Li Gonglin”.
The painting is a deftly executed, strikingly animated composition. As Barnhart notes, the interaction between figures in the present work echoes the interplay of gestures, glances and individualised expressions seen in Li Gonglin’s Classic of Filial Piety, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. However, in Barnhart’s appraisal, the closest parallel with Li’s accepted works is with Li’s Five Horses, a work recently rediscovered and now in the Tokyo National Museum (illustrated here, p 87). In Barnhart estimation: “Comparison of the head of the fifth groom in Li’s Five Horses with the second rider in the present scroll reveals further similarities of a kind that suggest a singular technique of drawing and shaping of a head.” (Barnhart, p.103).
The second of the following two lots illustrates a different aspect of Li’s legacy, as a full colour copy of Li’s Five Horses. The present version of Five Horses is clearly later in date than Seven Worthies Crossing the Pass. Moreover, it is an unequivocal homage to Li’s original masterpiece of eleventh century equestrian painting. However, there are incongruous, almost playful additions in the form of its frontispiece, signature and colophons.
The frontispiece that dominates the opening of scroll prominently displays an animated calligraphic title, with a signature of the tenth century Song calligrapher Gao Yi. This anachronism is further underscored by the addition of the signature of tenth century painter Zhao Yuanzhang, small and unassuming, at the very end of the painting. Very little is known of Zhao, and none of his works survive into the present. The signature and the frontispiece provide the viewer with anachronisms that test their knowledge of Song painting, as the putative inscriber and artist both predate Li Gonglin’s Five Horses by around a century. The various colophons explore the calligraphic styles of Yuan and Ming masters, and even the brushwork of the Qianlong emperor. Furthermore, the seals on the painting and frontispiece include impressions reproducing the seals of Song Emperor Huizong, as a further illustration that the artist behind the present work sought to reproduce a broad range of historical models.
Suffused with impactful colour, dextrous brush work, and experimental vigour, this work clearly comes from a masterful yet playful hand. It was quite possibly an exploratory work by a pre-eminent artist of the modern era, experimenting with the Li’s classical style, studying historic calligraphic and seal carving techniques, and perhaps even testing his viewers art historical knowledge through the addition of anachronistic signatures and inscriptions.