QIAN SONGYAN 錢松喦 (Yixing, China, 1899 - 1985)

Snowscape

20th Century

A study of a snowy mountain landscape dotted with dwellings, a pagoda, and a pavilion at the edge of a rocky cliff

Ink and colour on paper, mounted as a hanging scroll

Signed, with three red seals

68cm high, 45cm wide

錢松喦 晴雪圖

二十世紀

設色紙本 立軸

款識：晴雪圖。錢松喦作

鈐印：「錢」、「松岩」、「大好河山」

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PROVENANCE:

UK Private Collection

來源:

私人英國收藏

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Qian Songyan was born in 1899 in Hushu, a small farming village near Yixing in Jiangsu Province. At an early age he developed a strong interest in painting and calligraphy, and explored antique and painting shops in order to study the works inside. During his teenage years he created several works on village life, and garnered the nickname 'the Little Painter'.

The following period of his life was marked by great trauma and hardship. After Wuxi fell to the invading Japanese troops in 1937, Qian and his family fled to his hometown of Yixing. Later on he relocated to Nanjing, and there his personal and artistic life was greatly affected by the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. Denounced as a 'landowner, bureaucrat and capitalist' by the revolutionary committees, he was sent to Zhaos Village in Jintan to perform physical labor, which included breaking ice with bare hands and washing vegetables during the harsh winter. After a brief respite he was sent, at the age of 70, to the 57th Cadre School in Zhenjiang, where he secretly painted with and on whatever materials he could find.

In 1971 he was allowed to leave the camp, and his career flourished. He painted large-scale murals for the Jujube Garden, the Beijing Hotel, the Chinese embassy in the Czech Republic, and the Summer Palace, as well as publishing books and creating works on paper. Since his death in 1985, Qian Songyan's works have been collected by major museums, and in honour of his 120th-year anniversary, the Museum of Qian Songyan was inaugurated in 2019 in his hometown Yixing.

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