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Lot Essay
One of the painter's favourite animal painting subjects, the goldfish is a Chinese cultural symbol of wealth and abundance and celebrated as one of its most important animal symbols. In his co One of the painter's favourite animal painting subjects, the goldfish is a Chinese cultural symbol of wealth and abundance and celebrated as one of its most important animal symbols. In his considerable oeuvre, Lee Man Fong produced a significant number of doves and goldfish paintings which express the importance and continuing relevance of Chinese culture and cultural meaning in his life and works.
Lee Man Fong's Fifteen Goldfish (Lot 2023) is, above all, distinguished by the virtuosic and gestural brushwork composing each of the goldfish. Composed of nothing more than a few deftly placed and well-executed brushstrokes in the xieyi free-hand style, each goldfish is a mark of the idealized abstract quality of the Chinese brush skillfully rendered by the painter in oil.
In the 1940s, the artist was starting to produce, albeit in a small number, exquisite paintings of goldfish and doves. These works, unlike paintings of the same subjects from the 1960s onwards, were not part of the staple commercial works that he produced as a full-time practicing artist in his later years. Rather, they were pieces conceived and executed in the continuous refinement of his eastern-style paintings. In these pieces, Lee Man Fong experimented with the creation of pictorial space, and pushed the limit of the oil brush to the execution of brush strokes with the oil brush. Many of these works were gifts to friends. In the mid-1940s, Lee Man Fong had made a smaller goldfish painting and gifted it to a close friend in Jakarta. Further to accepting the gift, the friend made an important proposition to Lee Man Fong - to paint a larger and more significant painting of the same subject, one that would challenge all of Lee Man Fong's existing abilities as a painter. Rising to the challenge, Lee Man Fong assiduously studied goldfishes in an aquarium before producing the present lot, arguably his most ambitious and certainly the largest goldfish painting executed by the artist in the 1940s.
In Fifteen Goldfish , Lee Man Fong sought a return to Mother Nature, not just in the simple act of painting animals but also in terms of his commitment to the more fundamental painterly element of composition, which continues in Lee Man Fong's works to bear a sense of ancient remoteness, distinctly similar to the compositions of traditional Chinese brush painting. Remarkable in many ways, the work is above all noted for the creation of abundant pictorial space that creates a sense of movement and dynamism. The aquatic plants painted along the lower edge of the painting recede into the background to create an impression of depth. In this, Lee Man Fong clearly employs the age-old technique of the perspective of receding planes employed by Chinese landscape painters. The goldfish themselves are painted variously sized; in them, Lee Man Fong deploys the perspective of scale, more commonly associated with the rationality of western painting.
The creation of depth within the painting is a harmonious marriage of the traditions and sensibilities of eastern and western painting, which the artist was pursuing all through his career. But more so than any time, it was in the formative period of the 1940s when he was still grasping and perfecting his technique that any achievement is especially significant.
Lee Man Fong first experimented with Eastern-style oil painting at the age of 25 in 1937 and became more decisively committed to the painting of Eastern elements in his paintings from 1949 onwards. The present lot, Fifteen Goldfish was painted during this period of experimentation. He absorbed the artistic conception, composition, lines and brushstrokes, and even the use of seal chops from Chinese painting. But instead of painting on with a Chinese ink brush on rice paper, the artist worked with oil on canvas and masonite board as his primary medium, fully conscious that modern painting of his time had to release itself from any single encompassing visual tradition. In this regard, Lee Man Fong was the best embodiment of a progressive Chinese painter, ever aware of the pervasive influence of Chinese cultural traditions and a distinct Chinese worldview on his art but always seeking to adapt his art to the sensibilities of the contemporary world.
Distinct from other Chinese painters like Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian who were contemporaneous to Lee Man Fong, he put down his Chinese brush to paint oil paintings in a Chinese style (or what has been termed by a number of critics as eastern-style oil painting too) which is firmly acknowledged as Lee Man Fong's contribution to the field of Chinese painting. In the best tradition of Chinese brush painting where objects or scenes portrayed is a symbolic or allegorical expression of the artist's feelings,
Fifteen Goldfish expresses a longing and pursuit for perfection in another realm. The work testifies to Lee Man Fong's mastery of technique and realisation of theme, depicting not just a school of goldfish but rather articulating a parallel universe in which they exist. In this world, there is an absence of strife; one finds only peace and calmness, and the evocation of an ideal world.
Purchased by the present owner, a noted collector Indonesian-Chinese private collector, from the immediate offspring of the previous owner - the friend who had challenged Lee Man Fong - Fifteen Goldfish bears not just superlative handling of the paintbrush and an elegant metaphorical statement on life but also an impeccable provenance and a story of the refined nature of an artist's worldview informed and entrenched in Chinese art and culture.
Lee Man Fong's Fifteen Goldfish (Lot 2023) is, above all, distinguished by the virtuosic and gestural brushwork composing each of the goldfish. Composed of nothing more than a few deftly placed and well-executed brushstrokes in the xieyi free-hand style, each goldfish is a mark of the idealized abstract quality of the Chinese brush skillfully rendered by the painter in oil.
In the 1940s, the artist was starting to produce, albeit in a small number, exquisite paintings of goldfish and doves. These works, unlike paintings of the same subjects from the 1960s onwards, were not part of the staple commercial works that he produced as a full-time practicing artist in his later years. Rather, they were pieces conceived and executed in the continuous refinement of his eastern-style paintings. In these pieces, Lee Man Fong experimented with the creation of pictorial space, and pushed the limit of the oil brush to the execution of brush strokes with the oil brush. Many of these works were gifts to friends. In the mid-1940s, Lee Man Fong had made a smaller goldfish painting and gifted it to a close friend in Jakarta. Further to accepting the gift, the friend made an important proposition to Lee Man Fong - to paint a larger and more significant painting of the same subject, one that would challenge all of Lee Man Fong's existing abilities as a painter. Rising to the challenge, Lee Man Fong assiduously studied goldfishes in an aquarium before producing the present lot, arguably his most ambitious and certainly the largest goldfish painting executed by the artist in the 1940s.
In Fifteen Goldfish , Lee Man Fong sought a return to Mother Nature, not just in the simple act of painting animals but also in terms of his commitment to the more fundamental painterly element of composition, which continues in Lee Man Fong's works to bear a sense of ancient remoteness, distinctly similar to the compositions of traditional Chinese brush painting. Remarkable in many ways, the work is above all noted for the creation of abundant pictorial space that creates a sense of movement and dynamism. The aquatic plants painted along the lower edge of the painting recede into the background to create an impression of depth. In this, Lee Man Fong clearly employs the age-old technique of the perspective of receding planes employed by Chinese landscape painters. The goldfish themselves are painted variously sized; in them, Lee Man Fong deploys the perspective of scale, more commonly associated with the rationality of western painting.
The creation of depth within the painting is a harmonious marriage of the traditions and sensibilities of eastern and western painting, which the artist was pursuing all through his career. But more so than any time, it was in the formative period of the 1940s when he was still grasping and perfecting his technique that any achievement is especially significant.
Lee Man Fong first experimented with Eastern-style oil painting at the age of 25 in 1937 and became more decisively committed to the painting of Eastern elements in his paintings from 1949 onwards. The present lot, Fifteen Goldfish was painted during this period of experimentation. He absorbed the artistic conception, composition, lines and brushstrokes, and even the use of seal chops from Chinese painting. But instead of painting on with a Chinese ink brush on rice paper, the artist worked with oil on canvas and masonite board as his primary medium, fully conscious that modern painting of his time had to release itself from any single encompassing visual tradition. In this regard, Lee Man Fong was the best embodiment of a progressive Chinese painter, ever aware of the pervasive influence of Chinese cultural traditions and a distinct Chinese worldview on his art but always seeking to adapt his art to the sensibilities of the contemporary world.
Distinct from other Chinese painters like Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian who were contemporaneous to Lee Man Fong, he put down his Chinese brush to paint oil paintings in a Chinese style (or what has been termed by a number of critics as eastern-style oil painting too) which is firmly acknowledged as Lee Man Fong's contribution to the field of Chinese painting. In the best tradition of Chinese brush painting where objects or scenes portrayed is a symbolic or allegorical expression of the artist's feelings,
Fifteen Goldfish expresses a longing and pursuit for perfection in another realm. The work testifies to Lee Man Fong's mastery of technique and realisation of theme, depicting not just a school of goldfish but rather articulating a parallel universe in which they exist. In this world, there is an absence of strife; one finds only peace and calmness, and the evocation of an ideal world.
Purchased by the present owner, a noted collector Indonesian-Chinese private collector, from the immediate offspring of the previous owner - the friend who had challenged Lee Man Fong - Fifteen Goldfish bears not just superlative handling of the paintbrush and an elegant metaphorical statement on life but also an impeccable provenance and a story of the refined nature of an artist's worldview informed and entrenched in Chinese art and culture.