Lot 1058: CHEN YANNING

CHEN YANNING
(B. 1945)
Humming
signed in Chinese; signed 'CHEN YAN NING' in Pinyin (lower right)
oil on canvas
116 x 144.2 cm. (45 5/8 x 56 3/4 in.)
Painted in 1994

Tai Yip Company, Chen Yan Ning: The Selected Oil Paintings, Hong Kong, China, 1997 (illustrated, p. 205).

Born in 1945, Chen Yanning is one of the major figures among the fourth generation realistic oil painters. After the Societal Reform in the 1980s, Chen began creating art with themes of daily life, reflecting his thoughts and emotions. Chen excels at grasping one's psychological state based on facial expressions, which enables him to depict the spirits of the human figures in his portraits. He was commissioned to paint many renowned and significant figures, among them Queen Elizabeth II, whom Chen painted in 1999. Chen's works are poetic and touching, they are manifestations of his harmonic use of colour, unique compositions, and complementary motifs to his themes.

In Humming (Lot 1058), Chen uses a narrower range of colours and focuses on the harmony of tones. The use of similarly warm violet and indigo hue intertwines repetitively on the carpet and qipao, echoing each other. The snowy white long-haired dog stands out from the cool-colour background and becomes the centre of attention. Besides the delicate use of colour, Chen's skillful composition not only enables the capture of the transient moment but also increases the theatricality of the painting; the lady gazes at the eyes of the dog which simultaneously draws the viewers' attention to the dog. With the distant gaze of the dog, Chen effectively expands the sense of space beyond the edges of the canvas.With his technical mastery, Chen uses his extremely delicate brushstrokes to depict the lady's beautiful and exquisite face, her slender body, the soft fluffy hair of the dog and the lush green grass. Viewers are drawn into the scene of the painting with the refined naturalistic rendering of the painting. In the 1980s, Realism was not the only recognized artistic style in China, yet Chen has chosen this path which required disciplined conscientious training. With a great sense of life and humanity in the naturalistic creations, he is indeed a colourful addition to the Modern Chinese oil painting.