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This lot, titled "Fish Boats" is a painting from life by Wu Guanzhong that was inspired by his 1991 visit to the Zhoushan Archipelago, situated at the entrance to Hangzhou Bay (adjacent to the estuaries of the Yangzi, Qiantang and Yong Rivers) off the coast of Zhejiang Province in the East China Sea. It is the largest group of islands belonging to China, and forms one of the three richest fishing grounds worldwide. As early as the 1950s, Wu's great mentor, Lin Fengmian, had already depicted some of the scenery there in a number of oil paintings showing the local fisherwomen collecting a plentiful catch. Those images are still admired for their natural simplicity and innocence. Lin Fengmian was fond of capturing the expressions and emotions of the people in his pictures of the Zhoushan fishing grounds, but Wu Guanzhong favors the more formalized, structural beauty of boats suspended in space, as it is.

Wu once gave a written account of why he is so partial to painting boats: "I am fond of depicting boats because they give me a keen sense of visual comfort. There is as much aesthetic pleasure in a lonesome boat as in a whole group, and beauty in the fluttering of sails being set or taken down, the tangle of crisscrossing ropes and rigging, the dazzling display of masts and poles, both horizontal and vertical, intersecting lines against the canvas and amongst the fishermen's busy flurry of activity. The sheer motley of colors is a feast for the eye and a great opportunity for the artist the give free rein to his skills."(from: "Wu Guanzhong About His Art: Fishing Harbors" Elsewhere he states, "People work the soil for grains, and face the ocean to harvest fish. Painters love to visit fishing villages, not for the fish, of course, but in search of the fisherfolk, their boats, the fishing nets...the beauty of these things. What an intriguing atmosphere emanates from a fishing village perched on the edge of the sea: bustling and crowded with people, with forests of masts rising against the horizon, ships moored in the harbor, resplendent in mottled colors and shapes-a distillated essence of the human condition. I've been to Dayu Island, Longxu Island, Qingdao, Shidao, Qinhuang Island, the Zhoushan Archipelago, Xiamen Harbor, Hainan Island-I think I must have seen pretty much all the major fishing villages and harbors along China's Southeastern coast..."(Wu Guanzhong, "Ten Days in Fishing Villages" The Silent Piccolo, New World Press, Sep 2004, p. 165) In the 1980s, Wu was experimenting with ink and wash, employing this technique during his visit to the Zhoushan fishing grounds, while in the 1990s he often tended to blend wash painting with oil on canvas. In this item, "Fish Boats" he has returned to unadulterated oil painting.

Wu Guanzhong has always been extremely fond of traveling as a refined pastime and a way of gathering images and impressions for his work. The 1960s and 70s saw him frequently on the road on the lookout for new themes. He would put the paint on thickly to achieve a solid yet luscious effect. To create a more convincing sense of depth, when working on trees and their finer branches he would use the side of his palette knife to scrape away some of the richly applied paint, enough to let the plain ground color resurface in places, and then fill in those spots with varicolored paint, careful not to let the fresh colors mix with the already applied shades. This gives the pictures a compact and refreshing quality, and the particular technique just described has become one of the most important characteristic features of Wu Guanzhong's oil paintings. According to Wu, he derived his inspiration from antique Greek pottery and the oil paintings of Matisse. This special "paint-and-scrape"method produces the same effect in oil paintings that varying amounts of ink on rice paper achieve in monochromes, leading to semi-transparent shades depending on the degree of dilution and absorption: there is a much keener sense of depth and gradation in the finished work. In "Fish Boats" Wu exploits exactly this trademark method of his to emphasize the smooth and three-dimensional structural beauty of the boats with their masts, hulks, gunwales, ropes and rigging.

In the 1980s, Wu Guanzhong found his own style in polychrome ink paintings that focused on the aesthetics of lines, the most basic element in pictorial arts. Wu's innovative individual style, firmly rooted in tradition and a belief in the continuity of artistic endeavor, expresses the subtle emotional connection between the artist and the figures shown in his paintings. Not only popular among his Chinese compatriots, Wu's oeuvre has long since found a very appreciative international audience. In 1991, he received the honor "Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" (the French Medal of Art and Literature), and in 1992 the British Museum held a special exhibition titled "wu Guanzhong, A Twentieth Century Chinese Painter" acquiring his work "Birds'Paradise"for its permanent collection. It was the first exhibition the British Museum had ever held of works by a living Chinese artist. In the eyes of Western connoisseurs, Wu's paintings have the simmering spirit of Oriental art, yet also display a novel aesthetic style that undoubtedly makes him one of the most fascinating and brightest stars of contemporary Chinese art. His unique blend of tradition and modernity is also the main reason why galleries and art aficionados have shown such a predilection for his works for more than 20 years.

Wu Guanzhong's paintings exhibit the formal principles of Western abstract art, employed to present the emotional imagery of the classical Chinese literati-painter. Wu adheres to the time-honored Chinese aesthetic principle that poetry and painting should form a harmonious unity. In traditional Chinese literature and painting, "boats"are a medium that carries and connects the very souls of poetry and pictorial expression. In Tang poet Wei Yingwu's poem At Chuzhou on the Western Stream we find such imagery conveyed in four lines: Where tender grasses rim the stream, and deep boughs trill with mango-birds, on the spring flood of last night's rain the ferry-boat moves as though someone were poling."Wu Guanzhong writes: "The ferry-boat moves as though someone were poling'-a lonely boat floating leisurely on a deserted stream, the entire scene steeped in a solemn tranquility as the surrounding vegetation throws limpid reflections on the water: this is meant by the delicately intertwined and interdependent beauty of poetry and painting. I have painted countless boats and ships, from the Wupeng boats in Shaoxing to the boats on Lake Tai, their sails reflecting on the water's surface, from the fishing boats of the Zhoushan Archipelago, their forest of masts rising high, to the tourist steamers on the Yangzi River, and from the fish boats of the Qinhuang Island to the pleasure barges in Indonesia with their large protruding eye embellishments...the movement of boats slowly drifting along, bobbing gently up and down as they are swayed this way and that by the ripples and waves on the water's surface, this is a sight so full of constantly and rapidly changing forms and patterns that it can easily reveal the aesthetic appeal of both the concrete and the abstract. In the renowned classical Qingming River Painting we find that the underlying pattern of a cluster of ships in close proximity is banned onto the screen with an uncanny sense of abstraction. Yet at the same time the artist has given ample expression to the aesthetic satisfaction that can be found in the structural and formative beauty of the entire panorama. In Chinese painting and poetry, boats have always been a source for inspiration, and a medium for subtle emotions. Take these lines from a poem by Li Qingzhao, "I have heard that the springtime at Shuangxi is yet lovely. I intend to sail there in a dainty boat. I fear only that the featherweight Shuangxi boats would not be able to bear my burden of grief"-lines that have become immortal."(from: Wu Guanzhong About His Art: Fishing Harbors") It is therefore clear enough that for Wu, who places great emphasis on the poetic quality of his paintings, boats are more than just vehicles for the expression of structural, abstract beauty. This painting, showing fishing boats moored at the harbor of a fishing ground, employs the freehand brushwork of Oriental art to communicate the imagery and meaning of an abundant catch. The simple but powerful abstract forms and lines of the boats-their hulks, their masts and ropes and riggings-have a distinct formal beauty. Together with the rich, dappled coloring of the boats and the ocean waves, they form a picture that captures the very essence of the self-reliant, plain life of the fisherfolk. Wu Guanzhong's seascape paintings, unique in style and approach, reveal the touch of a truly great master behind their apparent simplicity and aesthetic abstraction.