The Art Newspaper

Records broken at Chinese sales of traditional works

Mainland auction houses have strong season

By Chris Gill. Web only
Published online: 16 December 2009

beijing. Antique and traditional Chinese works of art have seen a huge increase in interest at autumn sales held by mainland auction house stalwarts Poly Auction and China Guardian Auction, in Beijing.

At Beijing Poly, six sales dominated by paintings but also including ceramics and rare books, were held from 19 to 24 November and generated $230m, a new record for mainland China.

A Poly Auction spokeswoman told the Art Newspaper that buyers were predominately from mainland China, and interest in traditional Chinese art has increased. The highlight of the sale was the $24.7m price for a 16th-century scroll painting by Wu Bin, entitled Eighteen Arhats, depicting monks on a journey, and reported to be once part of the collection of China’s Qianlong Emperor. The auction house would not reveal the identity of the buyer, though local media reported that the piece went to Shanghai collector Liu Yiqian.

Another significant sale at Poly Auction was a calligraphy piece, Letter Leaf, by Zeng Gong, a Tang and Song Dynasty scholar (around 10th to 11th centuries), which sold for $15.9m. Both pieces were submitted for auction by Baron Guy Ullens, the Belgian collector, who consigned 16 pieces in total.

A new record for living artist Wu Guanzhong was also set at Poly Auction for the piece The Great Falls of Tanzania, 1975, which sold for $ 4.5m.

The China Guardian 09 Autumn Auction on November 23—Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy—also saw a new a record for the auction house, with $161m of sales. Guardian set a new record, albeit it only briefly held, for Chinese calligraphy with the sale of the Song Dynasty work Writings by Prominent Personages by several artists, including Zhu Xi and Zhang Jingxiu, which sold for $14.7m. The record was subsequently broken by the Poly Auction sale of the calligraphy piece Letter Leaf.

At Guardian Auction’s oil painting sale, Wu Guanzhong’s Northern Scenery, 1973, sold for $4.42m, and Chairman Mao at the Steel Mill, by Jin Shangyi, 1969, sold for $2.96m.