Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Collection - Pan Tianshou (潘天寿)

At Christie’s Hong Kong 2014 Autumn Auctions (20-26 NOVEMBER 2014) went with the exhibition of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth collection.

The exhibited objects and works of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth collection were not many and included Chinese antiques (stones, etc), some Ming dynasty furniture and two modern Chinese paintings. This American collector's eyes, in terms of Chinese paintings, are supposed to be similar to my eyes. The exhibited two paintings were: one is a flower painting of Pan Tianshou (潘天寿) and the other one is a landscape painting of Shi Lu (石鲁). The sizes of these two paintings are similar and relatively large (about 1.0m wide and 1.5 meter high). Though not top level work of each painter (the top level works must be in some museums) but not failure at all. I respected Robert Hatfield Ellsworth with surprise as these two painters have been ranked as No. 1 and No. 2 in my personal greatest modern Chinese painters' list, not Zhang Daqian, Qi Baishi or some other well known great modern Chinese painters whose paintings, hundreds of them, were exhibited at the prime locations of Christie’s Autumn Auctions very large apace preview gallery. I found only one small Shi Lu painting and also one small Pan Tianshou painting in this Christie’s quite large preview gallery.

I briefly introduced Shi Lu in the other Post as a very versatile painter and as a still very much under appreciated great modern Chinese painter and his paintings being still very much undervalued.

Pan Tianshou is not so very versatile as Shi Lu. Pan Tianshou was a professor at Hangzhou Art School and wrote many books - very good books mostly and his paintings reflect well what he wrote. He talked a lot of the importance of composition in the paintings. His paintings made after his 40's - 50's (see Note) show almost perfect or at least very well-thought composition - every thing including Chinese letters and chops being put in one painting has its proper position, size and direction and maybe color. This is not easy to do. And probably this is a reason why Pan Tianshou's paintings are not so versatile as Shi Lu's paintings. As being a professor, having written many books on paintings it is not easy to make perfect or should-be paintings as he said. Unless he were an art professor and had written how the Chinese paintings should be in his books his works would have been more versatile because less restriction. Pan Tianshou can be compared with Matisse in some ways.

(Note)
His young age paintings (say in his 20's - 30's) are not so distinctively good. 


















AAG