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From a Prominent North American Collection (Lots 653-655)
NI ZAN (1301-1374)
River Pavilion, Mountain Colours
Details
NI ZAN (1301-1374)
River Pavilion, Mountain Colours
Hanging scroll, ink on paper
81.8 x 33.4 cm. (32 1⁄8 x 13 1⁄8 in.)
Inscribed with a poem and signed by the artist
Dated tenth day, third month of wushen year (1368)
Colophon by Xie Chang (14th C.), with three seals
Nine collector’s seals: two of Da Chongguang (1623-1692), one of Wang Hongxu (1645-1723), four of Hongxiao (1722-1778) and two of Wang Jiqian (C.C. Wang, 1907-2003)
River Pavilion, Mountain Colours
Hanging scroll, ink on paper
81.8 x 33.4 cm. (32 1⁄8 x 13 1⁄8 in.)
Inscribed with a poem and signed by the artist
Dated tenth day, third month of wushen year (1368)
Colophon by Xie Chang (14th C.), with three seals
Nine collector’s seals: two of Da Chongguang (1623-1692), one of Wang Hongxu (1645-1723), four of Hongxiao (1722-1778) and two of Wang Jiqian (C.C. Wang, 1907-2003)
Provenance
Collection of C. C. Wang.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Literature
Osvald Sirén, Chinese Painting, Vol. 7, Lund Humphries, London, 1956, p.126.
James Cahill, An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: T’ang, Sung, Yuan, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980, p 312.
Kei Suzuki ed., Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings: Vol. 1 American Collections, Private Collection, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1983, p. I-94, pl. A14-039.
Yiyuan Duoying, No. 38, People Fine Arts Publishing House, Shanghai, 1988, cover.
Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Eighth-Fourteenth Century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992, p. 491, fig. 198.
Paintings of Ni Zan, Shanghai People's Fine Art Publishing House, September 1992, p.17, pl.17.
James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994, p. 73, fig. 3.1.
Overseas Collections of Famous Chinese Paintings Through the Dynasties Vol.IV: Liao Jin Xixia Yuan, Hunan Fine Art Publishing House, December 1998, pp.175, 178, pl.111.
Zhou Jiyin and Wang Fengzhu ed., A Dictionary of Chinese Paintings: Volume on Liao to Yuan, Phoenix Education Publishing Ltd., Nanjing, May 2002, p. 449.
Chronology of Ni Zan, People’s Fine Art Publishing, Beijing, 2009, p. 233.
An-yi Pan and Ellen Avril, Nature Observed and Imagined: Five Hundred Years of Chinese Painting, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, 2010, cat. 7, pp. 46-47 and cover.
Kathleen Yang, Through a Chinese Connoisseur’s Eye: Private Notes of C.C. Wang, Zhong Hua Book Company, Beijing, 2010, p. 326, fig. 71.
Tian Hong, C.C. Wang’s Collection of Ancient Chinese Paintings, Vol. 1, Tianjin People’s Fine Art Publishing, Tianjin, 2013, p. 159, pl. 74.
Xu Bangda, Important Notes on Classical Painting and Calligraphy (Yuan, Ming and Qing Paintings), Forbidden City Publishing, Beijing, 2015, pp. 155-156.
She Cheng ed., The Chronological Chronicle of Yuan Dynasty Art History, Tianjin People’s Fine Art Publishing House, 2017, p.662.
Tian Hong ed., C.C. Wang’s Collection of Ancient Chinese Paintings, Vol. 1: Song and Yuan, Tianjin’s People’s Fine Art Publishing, Tianjin, June 2018, p. 345, pl. 59.
James Cahill, An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: T’ang, Sung, Yuan, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980, p 312.
Kei Suzuki ed., Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings: Vol. 1 American Collections, Private Collection, University of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, 1983, p. I-94, pl. A14-039.
Yiyuan Duoying, No. 38, People Fine Arts Publishing House, Shanghai, 1988, cover.
Wen C. Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Eighth-Fourteenth Century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992, p. 491, fig. 198.
Paintings of Ni Zan, Shanghai People's Fine Art Publishing House, September 1992, p.17, pl.17.
James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994, p. 73, fig. 3.1.
Overseas Collections of Famous Chinese Paintings Through the Dynasties Vol.IV: Liao Jin Xixia Yuan, Hunan Fine Art Publishing House, December 1998, pp.175, 178, pl.111.
Zhou Jiyin and Wang Fengzhu ed., A Dictionary of Chinese Paintings: Volume on Liao to Yuan, Phoenix Education Publishing Ltd., Nanjing, May 2002, p. 449.
Chronology of Ni Zan, People’s Fine Art Publishing, Beijing, 2009, p. 233.
An-yi Pan and Ellen Avril, Nature Observed and Imagined: Five Hundred Years of Chinese Painting, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, 2010, cat. 7, pp. 46-47 and cover.
Kathleen Yang, Through a Chinese Connoisseur’s Eye: Private Notes of C.C. Wang, Zhong Hua Book Company, Beijing, 2010, p. 326, fig. 71.
Tian Hong, C.C. Wang’s Collection of Ancient Chinese Paintings, Vol. 1, Tianjin People’s Fine Art Publishing, Tianjin, 2013, p. 159, pl. 74.
Xu Bangda, Important Notes on Classical Painting and Calligraphy (Yuan, Ming and Qing Paintings), Forbidden City Publishing, Beijing, 2015, pp. 155-156.
She Cheng ed., The Chronological Chronicle of Yuan Dynasty Art History, Tianjin People’s Fine Art Publishing House, 2017, p.662.
Tian Hong ed., C.C. Wang’s Collection of Ancient Chinese Paintings, Vol. 1: Song and Yuan, Tianjin’s People’s Fine Art Publishing, Tianjin, June 2018, p. 345, pl. 59.
Exhibited
New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the C. C. Wang Family Collection, 3 September 1999 – 9 January 2000.
Ithaca, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Nature Observed and Imagined: Five Hundred Years of Chinese Painting, 10 April – 13 June 2010.
San Francisco, Asian Art Museum, Exquisite Nature: 20 Masterpieces of Chinese Painting, 3 March – 1 November 2015.
San Francisco, Asian Art Museum, Mountains of the Mind: A Chinese Landscape Journey, 11 July 2024 – 27 January 2025.
Ithaca, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Nature Observed and Imagined: Five Hundred Years of Chinese Painting, 10 April – 13 June 2010.
San Francisco, Asian Art Museum, Exquisite Nature: 20 Masterpieces of Chinese Painting, 3 March – 1 November 2015.
San Francisco, Asian Art Museum, Mountains of the Mind: A Chinese Landscape Journey, 11 July 2024 – 27 January 2025.
Further details
Assembled over four decades by a distinguished Chinese-American family, the present collection represents one of the most significant privately held groups of Chinese paintings in North America. The family, closely connected to a vibrant circle of scholars and collectors including C.C. Wang and Professor Wen Fong, played a formative role in advancing scholarship, connoisseurship and the broader appreciation of Chinese paintings, alongside their many contributions to the arts and education. In 2023, Christie’s was honoured to present Flowers and Calligraphy by Chen Chun from this collection, formerly from the collection of Professor Wen Fong, which realized HK$28,810,000. The present selection of paintings, extensively published and exhibited, reflects the family’s singular vision as collectors.
Pure Beyond the Dusty World: Ni Zan’s River Pavilion, Mountain Colours
Born into a prosperous landowning family in Wuxi, Ni Zan (1301-1374) enjoyed a life of privilege in his early years, renowned for his cultivated pursuits – poetry, painting, calligraphy, and the collecting of antiquities, rare books, and art. His family’s extensive collection of early paintings granted him direct access to masterpieces of the past, from which he developed his distinctive style: transforming the hemp-fibre texture strokes of Dong Yuan into angular, ribbon-like forms. He also maintained close ties with leading artists of his generation, including Huang Gongwang and Wang Meng, together with whom he would be later celebrated as one of the Four Masters of the Yuan. Dong Qichang observed that Ni Zan ‘renders trees after the wintry forests of Li Cheng, rocks in the manner of Guan Tong, texture strokes after Dong Yuan – yet always with variations fundamentally his own.’ Revered for his unparalleled sparse, monochromatic ink landscapes of widely separated riverbanks, Ni Zan’s dry and restraint brushwork has been admired and emulated for centuries.
Painted in the spring of 1368, River Pavilion, Mountain Colours is one of the most fully realized works from Ni Zan’s later years, inscribed with a date corresponding to the tenth day of the third month of the year wushen, when a friend invited him to a monastic retreat and asked for a painting. By then the Mongol regime was collapsing, undone by natural disasters and the growing strength of the Ming forces. Two years earlier, Ni Zan had abandoned his home and given away his possessions in order to escape pillaging soldiers, embarking on a life as a rootless wanderer, detached from the turmoil of political change. It was within this atmosphere of physical hardship and spiritual anguish that he painted with a resolute intensity emblematic of the nobility of his character.
River Pavilion, Mountain Colours is a tranquil and beguiling example of the minimal, contemplative landscape for which Ni Zan became celebrated: on the sloping embankment in the foreground, five or six spindly trees rise against the broad expanse of water, beneath which stands a solitary, four-posted thatched pavilion. The river at the centre, left in blank reserve, creates a vast interval between the foreground and the distant mountains, their ridges delineated with a few dry, slanting strokes and scattered ink dots executed with supreme control. This transcendental simplicity – at once austere and resonant – powerfully conveys the artist’s moving alienation from a chaotic world, in which the serenity of the landscape becomes the vessel of his inner strength.
The painting bears a colophon by Xie Chang, a poet who of the late Yuan and early Ming who studied under Yang Weizhen and likewise chose a life of seclusion. Xie also inscribed Ni Zan’s Trees, Rocks and Bamboo, dated the same year and now in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. Over the centuries, River Pavilion, Mountain Colours passed through several distinguished collections: in the early Qing it was treasured by eminent collectors Da Chongguang and Wang Hongxu; by the mid-Qing it entered the collection of Hongxiao, Prince Yi. In the twentieth century, it was acquired by the renowned collector C. C. Wang. Frequently published and exhibited since the mid-century, the painting has long been recognised as one of the most celebrated extant works by Ni Zan. Its illustrious provenance and distinguished exhibition history affirm its stature as a rare and prized masterpiece within the canon of Chinese painting.
Pure Beyond the Dusty World: Ni Zan’s River Pavilion, Mountain Colours
Born into a prosperous landowning family in Wuxi, Ni Zan (1301-1374) enjoyed a life of privilege in his early years, renowned for his cultivated pursuits – poetry, painting, calligraphy, and the collecting of antiquities, rare books, and art. His family’s extensive collection of early paintings granted him direct access to masterpieces of the past, from which he developed his distinctive style: transforming the hemp-fibre texture strokes of Dong Yuan into angular, ribbon-like forms. He also maintained close ties with leading artists of his generation, including Huang Gongwang and Wang Meng, together with whom he would be later celebrated as one of the Four Masters of the Yuan. Dong Qichang observed that Ni Zan ‘renders trees after the wintry forests of Li Cheng, rocks in the manner of Guan Tong, texture strokes after Dong Yuan – yet always with variations fundamentally his own.’ Revered for his unparalleled sparse, monochromatic ink landscapes of widely separated riverbanks, Ni Zan’s dry and restraint brushwork has been admired and emulated for centuries.
Painted in the spring of 1368, River Pavilion, Mountain Colours is one of the most fully realized works from Ni Zan’s later years, inscribed with a date corresponding to the tenth day of the third month of the year wushen, when a friend invited him to a monastic retreat and asked for a painting. By then the Mongol regime was collapsing, undone by natural disasters and the growing strength of the Ming forces. Two years earlier, Ni Zan had abandoned his home and given away his possessions in order to escape pillaging soldiers, embarking on a life as a rootless wanderer, detached from the turmoil of political change. It was within this atmosphere of physical hardship and spiritual anguish that he painted with a resolute intensity emblematic of the nobility of his character.
River Pavilion, Mountain Colours is a tranquil and beguiling example of the minimal, contemplative landscape for which Ni Zan became celebrated: on the sloping embankment in the foreground, five or six spindly trees rise against the broad expanse of water, beneath which stands a solitary, four-posted thatched pavilion. The river at the centre, left in blank reserve, creates a vast interval between the foreground and the distant mountains, their ridges delineated with a few dry, slanting strokes and scattered ink dots executed with supreme control. This transcendental simplicity – at once austere and resonant – powerfully conveys the artist’s moving alienation from a chaotic world, in which the serenity of the landscape becomes the vessel of his inner strength.
The painting bears a colophon by Xie Chang, a poet who of the late Yuan and early Ming who studied under Yang Weizhen and likewise chose a life of seclusion. Xie also inscribed Ni Zan’s Trees, Rocks and Bamboo, dated the same year and now in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. Over the centuries, River Pavilion, Mountain Colours passed through several distinguished collections: in the early Qing it was treasured by eminent collectors Da Chongguang and Wang Hongxu; by the mid-Qing it entered the collection of Hongxiao, Prince Yi. In the twentieth century, it was acquired by the renowned collector C. C. Wang. Frequently published and exhibited since the mid-century, the painting has long been recognised as one of the most celebrated extant works by Ni Zan. Its illustrious provenance and distinguished exhibition history affirm its stature as a rare and prized masterpiece within the canon of Chinese painting.
Sale room notice
Please note the additional literature:
LITERATURE:
Paintings of Ni Zan, Shanghai People's Fine Art Publishing House, September 1992, p.17, pl.17.
請注意：本作品增加以下出版：
出版：
《倪瓚畫集》，上海人民美術出版社，1992年9月，第17頁，圖版17。
LITERATURE:
Paintings of Ni Zan, Shanghai People's Fine Art Publishing House, September 1992, p.17, pl.17.
請注意：本作品增加以下出版：
出版：
《倪瓚畫集》，上海人民美術出版社，1992年9月，第17頁，圖版17。
Brought to you by
Carmen Shek Cerne (石嘉雯)
Vice President, Head of Department, Chinese Paintings