Woman with Hoop Earrings

After a short stay in Berlin with his compatriot artist Xu Beihong Sanyu returns to the lively Parisian Montparnasse area in 1923. Rejecting the then prestigious but rigid teaching of the Beaux-arts School he enrolled in the Academie de la Grande Chaumière, a free spirit thriving environment where artists would meet for life model nude sessions, a practice still forbidden in the conservative China at the time. Sanyu used to go every afternoon to sharpen his drawing skills and quickly became well-known and admired in the insiders' circle. Well trained to calligraphy he naturally painted with a brush and ink a medium allowing no hesitation with the line. While other students were concentrated on grasping the nude's pose on paper he would sometimes let his attention wander around the room and strike a drawing of one person in the audience (Fig.1). In Untitled (Lot 600), one probably recognises the large melancholic eyes and facial features of Marcelle Charlotte Guyot de la Hardrouyere (Fig.2), a French woman whom Sanyu met at the Academie and married in 1928. With a depicted softness and attention Untitled translates the artist's love for his wife. Dated circa 1929 the work is probably one of the latest watercolour drawings. The same year upon his dealer's advice, Henri-Pierre Roché, Sanyu started using oil a medium that he will then favour over ink.