Mid-Autumn Festival

Details

QI BAISHI (1863-1957)
Mid-Autumn Festival
Hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper
104 x 34.7 cm. (41 x 13 5/8 in.)
Entitled, inscribed and signed, with three seals of the artist
One collector’s seal of Wang Fangyu (1913-1997)

Literature

Fang-Yu Wang & Kai-Yu Hsu, Ch’I Pai-Shih’s Paintings, Art Book Co., Ltd., Taipei, May 1979, p.102, pl. 40.
The Collected Works of Qi Baishi Volume V, Hunan Fine Art Publishing House, October 1996, p.280; pl.266.
A Catalogue of Qi Baishi’s Paintings, Tianjin People’s Fine Art Publishing House, July 2006, p.358.
Pictures of the Mind: The Art of Wang Fangyu, Wang Shaofang, China, 2012, p.146, pl.46.

Exhibited

Beijing, Aurther M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University, Pictures of the Mind: The Art of Wang Fangyu, December 8 2012 – February 20 2013.

Further Details

The esteemed scholar, collector, and artist Wang Fangyu (1913-1997), born in Beijing, began training in calligraphy from a young age. He had an illustrious academic career in the United States, where he was professor of Chinese language and literature at Yale and later Seton Hall University. United by a shared passion for art and connoisseurship, Wang forged a close friendship with Zhang Daqian. Together with his wife Sum Wai (1918-1996), Wang meticulously assembled the largest and most significant private collection of Bada Shanren’s works. This unparalleled collection served as the cornerstone for Wang Fangyu’s pioneering scholarship, establishing him as a foremost authority on Bada Shanren today. His co-authored monograph on Qi Baishi in 1979, alongside Hsu Kai-yu, remains a seminal work in the field. Wang’s own abstract calligraphy exudes dynamism and poetry, injecting fresh vitality into the tradition of calligraphy.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

Qi Baishi entitled the present painting Mid-Autumn Festival and adorned the composition with lotus roots, tea ware, and pastries. A closer look shows that the three pastries bear unusual imprinted patterns of poisonous creatures. These pastries are called “Five Poisonous Cakes” and are traditional Chinese festival pastries with imprints of five poisonous creatures (snake, centipede, scorpion, spider, toad). Consuming them was believed to enhance resistance and ward off pests and disasters. (Different versions of this painting can be found in the Complete Works of Qi Baishi, Vol. 5, pl. 315 and pl. 310 from two different collections.)

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