PRINTPROVENANCE:
Private collection, Taiwan
(acquired directly from the artist's first son Chen Chung-kuang in 1940s by the owner's father)
This painting is to be sold with a picture of the artist's first son and the artwork.
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Street Scene
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from 1929 - 1933 Oil on canvas 38 x 46.5 cm |
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Estimate
3,800,000 - 5,000,000 969,000 - 1,276,000 124,800 - 164,200
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Sold Price
4,080,000 1,014,925 131,063
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PROVENANCE:
Private collection, Taiwan
(acquired directly from the artist's first son Chen Chung-kuang in 1940s by the owner's father)
This painting is to be sold with a picture of the artist's first son and the artwork.
Catalogue Note:
After graduating from Tokyo Fine Arts Institute in 1929, Chen Cheng-po came to Shanghai at the invitation of Chinese painter Wang Jiyuan, who had also been in Japan. He joined the Jue Lan School, the first movement of modern art in the history of Chinese art and also taught at Xinhua Arts Junior College and Changming Arts Junior College. He was very active in the art scene of Shanghai, until his return to Taiwan in 1933 because of war. According to Chen Cheng-po’s son, Chen Chung-kuang, Chen’s residence was within walking distance of Xinhua Arts Junior College. Before November 1937, the original location of Xinhua Arts Junior College was in the Dapuqiao of Nantu area, which is now the Haihua Garden residential area on Dapu Road. In this piece, “Street Scene”, the artist painted a Dapu Road street sign and street light, a common sight during those days. Based on the subject matter, it has been suggested that this piece is one of Chen’s works he completed during his time living in Shanghai.
In the early 1920s Shanghai was a place where modern art flourished and resonated. In this modern city, Chen Cheng-po, in his thirties and his prime, consciously abandoned the Japanese-style art training he received in Tokyo, along with the western-style he learned there, to take up traditional ink-wash painting. The change injected brand new creative viewpoints into his oil painting that further created a key turning point in his artistic life. Consequently, his works complimented the delightfulness of ink-wash brushstrokes, evident in the street light, telephone pole, and the bare trees in “Street Scene”. The vivid and lively colors of Chen’s earlier works have now been toned down to mainly yellowish and reddish browns, radiating a quaint atmosphere. In the composition, we can see that Chen did not follow the one-point perspective, as is taught in schools; rather, he adopted the multi-point perspective of traditional Chinese shan shui paintings. The close-up street scene winds upward as trees and houses layered together create a sense of depth, demonstrating Chen’s unique style of mixing oriental and western art elements and his strong subjective sensibility.
In the early 1920s Shanghai was a place where modern art flourished and resonated. In this modern city, Chen Cheng-po, in his thirties and his prime, consciously abandoned the Japanese-style art training he received in Tokyo, along with the western-style he learned there, to take up traditional ink-wash painting. The change injected brand new creative viewpoints into his oil painting that further created a key turning point in his artistic life. Consequently, his works complimented the delightfulness of ink-wash brushstrokes, evident in the street light, telephone pole, and the bare trees in “Street Scene”. The vivid and lively colors of Chen’s earlier works have now been toned down to mainly yellowish and reddish browns, radiating a quaint atmosphere. In the composition, we can see that Chen did not follow the one-point perspective, as is taught in schools; rather, he adopted the multi-point perspective of traditional Chinese shan shui paintings. The close-up street scene winds upward as trees and houses layered together create a sense of depth, demonstrating Chen’s unique style of mixing oriental and western art elements and his strong subjective sensibility.