Ink-brush master Zhang Daqian’s hanging scroll painting, Riverside View of Splendor, fetched 132 million yuan ($19.9 million) at a Beijing auction Monday night.
The landscape reveals Zhang’s intense studies on 10th-century great painter Dong Yuan, whose elegant style anticipated the formation of the Southern School of classic Chinese painting.
Zhang sold the painting in 1947 and since then it was kept in private hands and never taken to the open market — until it appeared in China Guardian Auctions’ “grand view” evening sale yesterday. Riverside View of Splendor is not the only painting sold above 100 million yuan. Another Zhang painting, Guanyin, in which he depicts a seated Goddess of Mercy in the traditional gongbi style, grossed 101 million yuan.
