Lot 1112
Treasury 4, no. 551 (‘Dreaming of a Summer Outing’)
HK$600,000

Glass, ink, and vermilion water-colour; with a slightly concave lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding rounded foot rim; painted with a continuous river landscape with a group of four figures, two certainly scholars, in a boat near a waterfall, with trees of various kinds on the near bank and the far bank receding in undulating, partially wooded hills to distant mountains, inscribed in cursive script, Fang Yuan ren fa yu Tieyan zhai, Erzhong 仿元人法於鐵硯齋，二仲 (‘Erzhong imitated the method of a Yuan master at the Iron Inkstone Studio’), with one seal of the artist, Ding, in negative regular script
Ding Erzhong, Iron Inkstone Studio, 1897–circa 1900
Height: 5.89 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.59/1.55 cm
Stopper: coral; pearl finial; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Dr and Mrs Louis E. Wolferz
Hugh M. Moss Ltd (1985)

Published:
Kleiner 1987, no. 258
Treasury 4, no. 551

Exhibited:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1993
Christie’s, London, 1999

Ding Erzhong cites a Yuan source for this painting, and it is one of the occasions where he has changed his painting style quite radically in response to an earlier artist. Although one can recognize Ding’s typical trees and the masterly painting of the figures in the boat, their personalities and postures achieved so effortlessly with a few deft strokes, the landscape style is quite unlike his usual paintings. One obvious difference is to be found in the density of the mass of individual brush strokes, performing the function of the more integrated wash-and-line technique in his earlier landscapes. But the most noticeable debt to the Yuan ideal is represented by the waterfall tumbling straight onto rocks, which divides the water at its base. This simple depiction, with childlike strokes developed out of a highly sophisticated re-acquired naïveté, was typical of the Yuan ideal.

Although this bottle is undated and difficult to date accurately, since Ding was following a style different from his usual one, we believe this was probably painted in the few years between 1897 and 1900. It is a pity that we cannot be more accurate, since it is the only known bottle with the studio name Iron Inkstone Studio (Tieyan zhai). This was not an uncommon studio name, which raises the possibility that Ding was simply sojourning in someone else’s studio when he painted this.

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.