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拍品专文
Chen Wen Hsi was of the pioneering generation of artists in Singapore who were not only key in the development of a new artistic identity for a country where none had come before, but were also instrumental in ensuring the continuity of the developing art scene. Chen was a beloved teacher of painting in the years prior to arriving in Singapore, where he would continue his important role as an educator in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and the Chinese Boys’ School. In 1949, Chen was warmly welcomed to Bangkok, Thailand, to the home of the former Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand. The latter’s daughter was then twelve years old and keen to learn to paint. Chen resided in their home for four months, teaching the young girl the basics of the brush, happy to impart his knowledge to his eager student. The accompanying photographs record Chen’s time in Bangkok, with one precious scene of the artist demonstrating his finger-painting technique to an eager audience, including the Permanent Secretary and his daughter. It was during this period that the present lot Singapore River was painted, and was gifted to the family who so generously hosted his stay. The painting, a large rendering of an iconic view in Singapore, has been a part of the family’s collection since then. Christie’s is proud to present this magnificent work by the artist this season that unveils a key moment in his artistic journey.
The son of a scholarly land-owner, Chen Wen Hsi was born in Baigong Village of Shatou District in Guangdong Province, southern China. There was little in terms of resources and materials to supplement his desire to paint, so he would improvise with mineral and vegetable colours as his medium, putting onto paper his rudimentary observations of the birds and animals that roamed the rice fields surrounding his village. These were the beginnings of Chen’s childhood aspiration to devote himself to art. It was only a matter of time before Chen would decide to leave his hometown for Shanghai, where he would enrol himself at the Xinhua Academy of Fine Art. During this time, Chen became acquainted with the well-known artist Pan Tianshou, who introduced Chen to the art of finger-painting – a technique that would be widely incorporated in his ink paintings. Despite Pan’s strong influence on Chen as a mentor in his formative years, sharing with the latter his deep respect for the traditional medium and techniques of Chinese paintings, Chen differed greatly from his mentor in his eagerness to assimilate the merits of popular Western art with the rigour of Chinese traditional painting as he strove to formulate his own distinct artistic identity. Despite having been exposed to Western theories of painting during his education in China, it was only after coming to Singapore in 1948 that Chen began to experiment boldly in his art.
A city that owes much of its success to its position as a trading hub for the region, the Singapore river was a centre of commerce, with the Old Port of Singapore at its mouth. The iconic river captured the imaginations of many artists from the country who were taken by the chaotic energy of daily mercantile life along the riverside, and the traffic of boats passing through the river. Chen was no exception, and is well known for his later cubist-inspired renderings of the Singapore river landscape. While the present lot shares the same decisive strokes of his more cubist siblings, Singapore River is extremely rare and unusual for his more realistic depiction of the river, demonstrating his mastery of the predominantly Western medium of oil paint at an early stage in his artistic career.
Chen believed that an artist should paint from nature, but not copy it in its entirety. Employing visible brushstrokes of thick, unblended paint in his illustration of the water body that dominates the composition, Chen breathes a rhythmic vitality into the scene, reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh’s typical handling of paint in his works. However, where Van Gogh’s sparkling river surface is created through short, even strokes of a limited range of blues and yellows, Chen’s river glitters iridescently in a mixture of cerulean blue and turquoise, painted over in strokes of white. The mark of Chen’s brush appears comparatively less regulated, though no less controlled in his placement. Their motion towards the lower right corner of the painting, coupled with his diagonal compositional arrangement, amplifies the energetic current that appears to push downstream. Perhaps it is a more Impressionistic approach he takes with this painting, with every stroke capturing the light that falls on each element in the composition. Where Alfred Sisley chose a palette of pale tones for his paintings of cool, misty mornings in the French countryside, Chen’s choice of colours were distinctly inspired by the vibrant tropics. The blues are bold, as is the white that blends into them, while orange and brown mark out the many boats lining the river, with red accents on the roof of the shophouses. He paints with a clean brush each time to avoid muddling the colours together, ensuring that they appear as if glimmering in the blazing clarity of the midday sun.
Remaining deeply rooted in Chinese painting traditions, Chen returns to black and white as the colours that hold the work together. Exposure to the batik fabric of the Southeast Asian region and its bold designs led to the pioneer Singapore artists adopting a similar stylisation of their subjects. Differing greatly from the Western artists in this respect, Chen favoured the clarity of the graphic line delineating each element of the scene. Singapore River highlights Chen’s ability as a true artist to absorb the conventional values and merits of each opposing ideology to build a distinct style of his own that assimilates only the best qualities of the masters before him.
Chen Wen Hsi contributed tremendously to the fledgling art scene in Singapore from the very moment he arrived, and his efforts have been recognised with numerous accolades, including an honorary Doctorate degree from the National University of Singapore in 1975. He was also the first recipient of the ASEAN Cultural and Communications Award in 1987, and was paid tribute after his passing in 1991 with a posthumous Meritorious Service Award. With the present painting, Chen’s legacy persists as it retains his bold palette and unhindered strokes in an early rendering of an iconic landscape that has seen drastic changes in the years between. Singapore River records the bygone years of a country’s humble beginnings as an entrepôt between East and West, as seen through the eyes and conveyed through the hands of a cultural legacy.
The son of a scholarly land-owner, Chen Wen Hsi was born in Baigong Village of Shatou District in Guangdong Province, southern China. There was little in terms of resources and materials to supplement his desire to paint, so he would improvise with mineral and vegetable colours as his medium, putting onto paper his rudimentary observations of the birds and animals that roamed the rice fields surrounding his village. These were the beginnings of Chen’s childhood aspiration to devote himself to art. It was only a matter of time before Chen would decide to leave his hometown for Shanghai, where he would enrol himself at the Xinhua Academy of Fine Art. During this time, Chen became acquainted with the well-known artist Pan Tianshou, who introduced Chen to the art of finger-painting – a technique that would be widely incorporated in his ink paintings. Despite Pan’s strong influence on Chen as a mentor in his formative years, sharing with the latter his deep respect for the traditional medium and techniques of Chinese paintings, Chen differed greatly from his mentor in his eagerness to assimilate the merits of popular Western art with the rigour of Chinese traditional painting as he strove to formulate his own distinct artistic identity. Despite having been exposed to Western theories of painting during his education in China, it was only after coming to Singapore in 1948 that Chen began to experiment boldly in his art.
A city that owes much of its success to its position as a trading hub for the region, the Singapore river was a centre of commerce, with the Old Port of Singapore at its mouth. The iconic river captured the imaginations of many artists from the country who were taken by the chaotic energy of daily mercantile life along the riverside, and the traffic of boats passing through the river. Chen was no exception, and is well known for his later cubist-inspired renderings of the Singapore river landscape. While the present lot shares the same decisive strokes of his more cubist siblings, Singapore River is extremely rare and unusual for his more realistic depiction of the river, demonstrating his mastery of the predominantly Western medium of oil paint at an early stage in his artistic career.
Chen believed that an artist should paint from nature, but not copy it in its entirety. Employing visible brushstrokes of thick, unblended paint in his illustration of the water body that dominates the composition, Chen breathes a rhythmic vitality into the scene, reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh’s typical handling of paint in his works. However, where Van Gogh’s sparkling river surface is created through short, even strokes of a limited range of blues and yellows, Chen’s river glitters iridescently in a mixture of cerulean blue and turquoise, painted over in strokes of white. The mark of Chen’s brush appears comparatively less regulated, though no less controlled in his placement. Their motion towards the lower right corner of the painting, coupled with his diagonal compositional arrangement, amplifies the energetic current that appears to push downstream. Perhaps it is a more Impressionistic approach he takes with this painting, with every stroke capturing the light that falls on each element in the composition. Where Alfred Sisley chose a palette of pale tones for his paintings of cool, misty mornings in the French countryside, Chen’s choice of colours were distinctly inspired by the vibrant tropics. The blues are bold, as is the white that blends into them, while orange and brown mark out the many boats lining the river, with red accents on the roof of the shophouses. He paints with a clean brush each time to avoid muddling the colours together, ensuring that they appear as if glimmering in the blazing clarity of the midday sun.
Remaining deeply rooted in Chinese painting traditions, Chen returns to black and white as the colours that hold the work together. Exposure to the batik fabric of the Southeast Asian region and its bold designs led to the pioneer Singapore artists adopting a similar stylisation of their subjects. Differing greatly from the Western artists in this respect, Chen favoured the clarity of the graphic line delineating each element of the scene. Singapore River highlights Chen’s ability as a true artist to absorb the conventional values and merits of each opposing ideology to build a distinct style of his own that assimilates only the best qualities of the masters before him.
Chen Wen Hsi contributed tremendously to the fledgling art scene in Singapore from the very moment he arrived, and his efforts have been recognised with numerous accolades, including an honorary Doctorate degree from the National University of Singapore in 1975. He was also the first recipient of the ASEAN Cultural and Communications Award in 1987, and was paid tribute after his passing in 1991 with a posthumous Meritorious Service Award. With the present painting, Chen’s legacy persists as it retains his bold palette and unhindered strokes in an early rendering of an iconic landscape that has seen drastic changes in the years between. Singapore River records the bygone years of a country’s humble beginnings as an entrepôt between East and West, as seen through the eyes and conveyed through the hands of a cultural legacy.