29 years' collection fate between Sanhuai House & Lin Fengmian

By the end of 1977, Lin Fengmian emigrated to Hong Kong and, until he died in 1991, he has lived through the Hong Kong period of his last life and creation days. During this period, Lin Fengmian's art has changed under the new living conditions. The artist who suffered from the Cultural Revolution came to a free environment, which made him even more courageous to express strong feelings, express his emotion through paintings; the works have become more expressive: basic and simple shape, wantonly brushwork, reducing paint details, warm bold and unrestrained color - totally changing the gloom temperament compared with domestic period.

Lin's Student Wu Guanzhong and a known critic Lang Shaojun all have their comments about the old artist.

"Artists' old paintings are more vigorous when they come older. But Lin Fengmian's paintings are different to the general concept. He didn't focus on the traditional constraints of brushwork itself, but always in the pursuit of childish and childlike innocence during the long journey of exploring new artistic territory. The paintings didn't become old in his old age." – Wu Guanzhong (Wu Guanzhong: To Teacher Lin Fengmian – Recalling Gardener in Garden Which is Full of Flowers', no. 33, Artist, p. 8)

"The creation of the artist's old age is back to his early days, even more doughty and stouthearted than his youth. No much sadness, and clearing out the lonely lyricism; only keeping the sound of waves kind of mutter and the thunder-like cheering." (Lang Shaojun, `Comfort the Suffering of Life')

These evaluations are also match the favor of the owner of Sanhuai House who has the largest volume of Lin Fengmian's works. In his view, "The revered Mr. Lin's works are good, particularly those created in late 1970s and early1980s. The revered Mr. Lin's works care the moods most, not quite unrestrained in early days, but more cheerful in his later years."

Mr. Sanhuai House can be said to be synonymous with cheerful. He was extolled as the collector who owned the largest collection of Lin Fengmian's works. The Lin Fengmian album published by Tianjin People's Art Publishing House, the exhibition hold in Hong Kong Arts Center 1992... All the exhibits were from Mr. Sanhuai House. Later, part of very important works of Taiwan Private Art Gallery exhibition, and exhibition in Shanghai Art Museum for 100th anniversary of Lin Fengmian, were provided by him too. Mr. Sanhuai House does not consider himself as a Lin Fengmian expert, but someone started to collecting Lin Fengmian's works from 1978. He has looked through, as it were, almost all of Lin Fengmian's works in nearly 30 years. "After seeing a lot which further prove my own collection vision, I am surer that I have the good stuff."

Before knowing Lin Fengmian, Mr. Sanhuai House who is fond of arts was a typical Western art lovers. He liked Picasso, Impressionism, Cubism etc. but didn't concern much about the Chinese painting etc., some traditional paintings. In 1978, because he was familiar with the General Manager of Hong Kong Chung Kiu Chinese Products Emporium, he participated the exhibition of Lin Fengmian which was organized by the company. Named that an exhibition, actually the event just pegged the 20 works he brought out from mainland, and some of his works Lin created in Hong Kong on the walls, sold slowly. In a very long time, Mr. Sanhuai House is among the few collectors of Lin Fengmian's works. Once he started, he abandoned other collections, focusing on Lin Fengmian's exclusive collections. And his collection only has one criterion: he likes it. Actually, until 20th century, in the late 1990s, Lin Fengmian's works basically had no price fluctuations, and the collector never thought the price of his favorite works would increase to such an alarming extent in the coming 21st century. But the real collector only collects for his own favor. Even Lin Fengmian's works also apply to it; however, he's still more concerned about those colorful, moving works and the works will evoke a response. These works must meet the standards; they must be true, kindly and beautiful, indispensable each of them. He likes to hang the works on the wall alternately, and enjoying them is his greatest fun.

His optimism determines his goodwill of understanding sharing. The collectors who don't understand sharing will never make the treasures carry out their own value, the circulation and appreciation value by the largest crowd. This time, the 9 works contributed by Mr. Sanhuai House are all selected treasures. He personally, no matter beauty or landscape still life, favors all of them. For the evaluation, he appreciates Lin Fengmian's landscape still life most. He believes this series is the most successful works that Lin Fengmian combined the Chinese and Western together, especially playing more Western brushwork styles in still life, which made some foreigners often look them as their stuff; however, the solid composition absorbed inspirations more from traditional Chinese paper cutting and shadowgraph.

This kind of favor makes Mr. Sanhuai House feel extremely sorry for the setback of the Chinese tradition. In his view, the reason for Lin Fengmian's works to touch people is all because of his overall cultivation, the harmonious interaction between traditional and modern, emphasizing the unity of personal character and artistic character. The artists never thought of money in the past, purely loving the art and working for art were their original purpose. Mr. Sanhuai House sighed with emotion, "It's difficult to find out these in young artists now."

Mr. Sanhuai House's comments on Lin Fengmian and his works (Lots 042-050)

I started buying Lin Fengmian's works from 1978. Until the revered Mr. Lin passed away in 1991, I total met him 4 to 5 times, but many of his relatives and friends are my friends. The revered Mr. Lin didn't talk much but he was always smiling; he's very sincere, not a hypocritical artist. Li Keran said his most admired artist is Lin Fengmian. He cited an example, saying that Lin Fengmian drew 100 horses with lines when he want to draw one horse. This is very rare serious and hard-won.

When we talk about the color, Lin Fengmian is always the most successful artist, second to none. Of course, this is my subjective point of view. It related to Lin Fengmian's experience. He studied at Lingnan School, later studied in Europe where he met Matisse and contacted with many best artists of Germany and France. The manager of Zhongqiao Gallery once told me that Lin Fengmian had full confidence with his own works. The revered Mr. Lin said: "It takes time to enjoy my works." In his point of view, Picasso is not an insurmountable model.

There are no many good collections among the revered Mr. Lin's early works. I personally think his best works are ink landscape paintings. He started to explore ink painting from 1930s, still immature in those days; getting better and better in 1950s, and from mid 1970s to mid 1980s are his best times. 90% of my personal collections are concentrated in this period. I stopped collecting the revered Mr. Lin's works after 1986 because the lines were stiff and the color not transparent as he was aged. But it is for certain that he definitely didn't paint any canvas after 1960s. I didn't have many canvas collections. "Farewell My Concubine" in the catalogue published by Tianjin People's Art Publishing House once was my collection.

I have collected the revered Mr. Lin's works for more than 20 years. Many people thought his paintings were not like Chinese paintings nor Western paintings in those years, and didn't like them. But I love them from the first sight. He is very successfully combined the Chinese and Western elements, no matter still life or figure, like Modigliani in face and puppet in neck, with lots of elements inside. Lin Fengmian said himself that his art mixes everything, paper cutting, puppetry, Impressionism and Cubism. This is the highest state of art that absorbed others' best and created their own individual art work, nobody can exceed him in Chinese modernism.

Chinese paintings don't need lighting, but Lin is the contrary. It's best to have two lights in different angles for his landscape paintings, and it must be yellow light. His works have too many levers. Wrong lighting would get rid of the level of mountains, rivers and clouds. The best frame for his works is golden, flax frame.

My first Lin Fengmian collection is a beauty picture, colored. Talking about collection, take the publication album as an example, no one has more collections than I did. Now there are large volume of collections in Taiwan. In the previous exhibitions, barely nobody bought color ink drawings, they all bought water ink ones. Now the market has made drastic changes, they all started to purchase colored ink drawings, and the price suddenly increased a lot. This is an amazing phenomenon and the funniest part of the art works collections.