Lot 1182
Treasury 4, no. 559 (‘Itinerant Monk at Sunrise’)
HK$475,000

Glass, ink, and watercolours; with a concave lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding rounded foot rim; painted on one main side with an itinerant monk resting beside an expanse of water and drinking from a flask, his straw hat, staff, and belongings on the ground behind him, with overhanging cliffs beyond from which a waterfall emerges to pour into the lake or sea beside which he sits, with the sun rising on the horizon; inscribed in cursive script, Ding Erzhong xie 丁二仲寫 (‘Painted by Ding Erzhong’), with one seal of the artist, Ding, in negative regular script; the other main side with a group of auspicious objects (a natural rock sculpture, a bronze hu with loose ring handles containing a flowering peony and a branch of pine, a tripod incense burner with calamus, a basket containing lingzhi, two peaches growing on a branch, and loquats, with half a sliced apple set in front of the basket along with a whole apple), inscribed in cursive script, Ni Qingteng laoren hua yi, kuimao dongyue, Erzhong xie yu Baixia 擬青藤老人晝意，癸卯冬月二仲寫於白下 (‘In the Winter month of the year kuimao, Erzhong painted this in Baixia, following the painting ideas of Qingteng laoren’) with two seals of the artist, Ding, in negative regular script and Erzhong, in negative seal script
Ding Erzhong, Nanjing, eleventh lunar month, 1903
Height: 6.61 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.60/1.98 cm
Stopper: coral; jadeite finial; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Kaynes-Klitz Collection
Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, 16 November 1989, lot 153

Published:
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 302
Treasury 4, no. 559

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March–June 1994
National Museum, Singapore, November 1994–February 1995
Christie’s, London, 1999

Baixia is another name for Nanjing, and the glass bottle here is similar in form to Sale 7, lot 139, being much chubbier than the normal Beijing shape. If made by the same local glass-maker, however, it appears that by now he has been pressed by Ding to produce better work, since the shape and detailing are much improved.

The subject of the itinerant monk is unique for Ding. The size of the figure is also rare, one comparable work being Sale 4, lot 43> from this collection, but here the figure is more prominent still. We see an echo of Ding’s jagged rocks coming in from the top of the picture frame here, but otherwise everything about this subject is unusual.

The other side is painted with a typical auspicious subject, but with a few unusual additions and in what appears to be a rather looser style. However, this is mainly the impression gained from the rock, which is much more naturalistic than in his previous rock paintings, with a great deal more grass growing from it, giving the impression of a looser style. The detailing of the bronze vessel and the other elements is very much like his earlier masterpieces of the subject.

Qingteng laoren was the literary name of the Ming writer and painter, Xu Wei 徐渭 (1521–1593), whose spontaneous brushwork was much admired. It is only with the auspicious objects that he specifically invokes Xu Wei, but the artist was also a well-known figure painter, and it may be that the rather stronger than usual lines of the robes of the itinerant monk are also a reference to Xu, although it is difficult with a bamboo pen to achieve the wildly varying modulation of Xu Wei’s distinctive brushwork.

This is not the Sotheby’s sale catalogue. This is a product of Hugh Moss for the purposes of this website. For the catalogue details please refer to Sotheby’s website or request a copy of a printed sale catalogue from Sotheby’s.