Horse and Riders
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
not including riders in sceneries by Kandinsky.
See also : Animals. China Chinese art Yuan Modern China Fu Baoshi 18th century painting George III Manet Marc US painting < 1940 Paris Sport in art Origins of sports European ceramics. Music and dance
Chronology : 1-1000 1000-1400 18th century 1760-1769 1870-1879 1910 1912 1940-1949. 1945 1981
not including riders in sceneries by Kandinsky.
See also : Animals. China Chinese art Yuan Modern China Fu Baoshi 18th century painting George III Manet Marc US painting < 1940 Paris Sport in art Origins of sports European ceramics. Music and dance
Chronology : 1-1000 1000-1400 18th century 1760-1769 1870-1879 1910 1912 1940-1949. 1945 1981
750 CE Horse by Han Gan
2017 SOLD for $ 17M by Christie's
Silk painting in ink and colors already existed under the Han, before the invention of paper. As early as 550 CE, an art critic defines six principles to be considered for appreciating a figurative work. The first principle is not derogable : the artist must transfer his energy into his art. It is also the basis of calligraphic art.
The Tang are great protectors of the arts. Narrative paintings feature groups in complex situations, with picturesque detail. The Taizong emperor also inaugurates the Tang's passion for the horse, that indispensable auxiliary of the warrior. He commissions the portraits of his favorite horses to Yan Liben.
The Tang imperial horses are the subject of a selection, integrating the best foreign breeds. The peak is reached during the reign of Xuanzong. His stable is reputed to house 40,000 horses, some of which are specially trained to dance in front of the emperor. Polo, hunting and jousting are practiced with passion. The main horse painter is Chen Hong.
Around 750 CE the self-taught artist Han Gan is noted for his artistic talents and invited to collaborate with Chen Hong. Han Gan abandons stylization for realism. The portrait of a horse, sometimes with a rider or a groom, becomes his exclusive theme. Each animal is observed individually.
On March 15, 2017, Christie's sold at lot 509 for $ 17M the image of a horse by Han Gan, 32 x 38 cm, very readable but heavily cracked. The animal with an elegant two-tone hair walks with a dignified slowness. The colophon of the Qianlong emperor includes no less than twelve imperial seal marks and the artwork is listed in the catalogue of his collection, the Shiqu Baoji.
Xuanzong's long reign is culturally splendid and politically catastrophic. The emperor had abandoned management to devote himself to pleasures. He was deposited in 756 CE after a short civil war. This date is probably the terminus ante quem for an original painting by Han Gan.
The Tang are great protectors of the arts. Narrative paintings feature groups in complex situations, with picturesque detail. The Taizong emperor also inaugurates the Tang's passion for the horse, that indispensable auxiliary of the warrior. He commissions the portraits of his favorite horses to Yan Liben.
The Tang imperial horses are the subject of a selection, integrating the best foreign breeds. The peak is reached during the reign of Xuanzong. His stable is reputed to house 40,000 horses, some of which are specially trained to dance in front of the emperor. Polo, hunting and jousting are practiced with passion. The main horse painter is Chen Hong.
Around 750 CE the self-taught artist Han Gan is noted for his artistic talents and invited to collaborate with Chen Hong. Han Gan abandons stylization for realism. The portrait of a horse, sometimes with a rider or a groom, becomes his exclusive theme. Each animal is observed individually.
On March 15, 2017, Christie's sold at lot 509 for $ 17M the image of a horse by Han Gan, 32 x 38 cm, very readable but heavily cracked. The animal with an elegant two-tone hair walks with a dignified slowness. The colophon of the Qianlong emperor includes no less than twelve imperial seal marks and the artwork is listed in the catalogue of his collection, the Shiqu Baoji.
Xuanzong's long reign is culturally splendid and politically catastrophic. The emperor had abandoned management to devote himself to pleasures. He was deposited in 756 CE after a short civil war. This date is probably the terminus ante quem for an original painting by Han Gan.
Five Drunken Kings Return on Horses by Ren Renfa
2016 SOLD for RMB 303M by Poly
A painting titled Five Drunken Kings Return on Horses was sold for HK $ 46.6M by Christie's on November 29, 2009, lot 815, for RMB 303M by Poly on December 4, 2016, lot 4050 and for HK $ 307M by Sotheby's on October 8, 2020, lot 2575. Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
It is in a very good contrast in spite of its age and has been carefully analyzed. The paper is conformant to the Song patterns and is earlier than the Ming. The scroll includes ancient colophons as well as the seals of three Qing emperors.
There are nine characters overall in this hand scroll 2.10 m long and 35 cm high painted in ink and colors. The kings are riding in vacillating attitudes and four grooms attend to assure that their honorable masters will not fall.
The artist was named Ren Renfa and lived under the Yuan dynasty. He was following a tradition dating back to the Tang dynasty for pictures of horses of great beauty. The irreverent nature of the theme is a proof of wittiness rare in art history suggesting an artistic freedom at the time of the Mongolian rule.
Although his work is not uncommon, Ren Renfa was probably not a professional artist : he made his career as an imperial official in charge of the regulation of rivers.
According to the opinion of a Ming scholar official, the drunken characters are the five sons of a Tang emperor. The leading prince riding a magnificent black horse is the future emperor Xuanzong whose love of pleasures will much later trigger a civil war against his dynasty.
The procession of drunken princes by Ren displays revealing similarities in its composition with an elegant promenade of women painted two centuries earlier by the Song artist Li Longmian and preserved at the Taiwan Museum.
It is in a very good contrast in spite of its age and has been carefully analyzed. The paper is conformant to the Song patterns and is earlier than the Ming. The scroll includes ancient colophons as well as the seals of three Qing emperors.
There are nine characters overall in this hand scroll 2.10 m long and 35 cm high painted in ink and colors. The kings are riding in vacillating attitudes and four grooms attend to assure that their honorable masters will not fall.
The artist was named Ren Renfa and lived under the Yuan dynasty. He was following a tradition dating back to the Tang dynasty for pictures of horses of great beauty. The irreverent nature of the theme is a proof of wittiness rare in art history suggesting an artistic freedom at the time of the Mongolian rule.
Although his work is not uncommon, Ren Renfa was probably not a professional artist : he made his career as an imperial official in charge of the regulation of rivers.
According to the opinion of a Ming scholar official, the drunken characters are the five sons of a Tang emperor. The leading prince riding a magnificent black horse is the future emperor Xuanzong whose love of pleasures will much later trigger a civil war against his dynasty.
The procession of drunken princes by Ren displays revealing similarities in its composition with an elegant promenade of women painted two centuries earlier by the Song artist Li Longmian and preserved at the Taiwan Museum.
Explain the narrative trend for legends in the paintings and porcelains of the Yuan dynasty.
The handscroll Five Drunken Princes Returning from Court on Horseback (五王醉歸圖) by Ren Renfa (任仁發, 1255–1328), a leading painter-official of the Yuan dynasty, is one of the most celebrated narrative paintings of the period. Its two high-profile auction appearances (Poly Beijing, 4 December 2016, sold for RMB 303.6 million / US$44 million; Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 October 2020, sold for HK$306.5 million / US$39.5 million) underscore its status as a cultural treasure.
To understand the painting in the broader context of Yuan-dynasty narrative trends in both paintings and porcelains, especially concerning “legends,” we must look at what kinds of stories were popular and why.
1. The Story Depicted in Ren Renfa’s Painting
The painting illustrates a famous anecdote from the Cao-Wei period (Three Kingdoms era, 3rd century): the “Five Princes of Ye” — Cao Cao’s sons Cao Pi, Cao Zhi, Cao Zhang, Cao Zhi, and Cao Biao — returning drunk from a banquet given by their father. The most famous literary source is Cao Zhi’s poem 《名都篇》 (“Song of the Capital”), which contains the line “王子侯歸醉” (The princes and marquises return drunk). Although historically the event is tied to Cao Cao’s court at Ye, by the Song and Yuan periods it had become a legendary tale of fraternal camaraderie, literary talent (especially Cao Zhi’s genius), and aristocratic indulgence.
Ren Renfa transforms this into a humorous, almost satirical tableau: the five princes are so inebriated that they can barely stay on their horses, supported by grooms and attendants. The painting is both a virtuoso display of horse painting (Ren was famous for it) and a gentle parody of princely dignity.
2. Broader Narrative Trends in Yuan Painting and Porcelain Concerning Legends
During the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), under Mongol rule, Chinese scholars and artists often felt politically marginalized. This led to a pronounced interest in historical and legendary anecdotes that carried moral, escapist, or subtly political meanings.
A. In Painting (handscrolls and album leaves)
Popular legendary themes included:
B. In Porcelain (especially blue-and-white of the mid-14th century)
When blue-and-white porcelain exploded in sophistication under the late Yuan (especially 1330s–1360s, the “Tochto phase”), narrative scenes became extremely common on large jars, dishes, and flasks. The most frequently depicted legendary stories were:
3. Why Legends Flourished in Yuan Art
Ren Renfa’s Five Drunken Princes Returning on Horseback is a quintessential expression of Yuan narrative taste: a light-hearted, slightly ironic treatment of a famous pre-Song legend that celebrates literary culture and aristocratic excess while subtly reminding viewers of a lost era of Han Chinese dominance. This same fascination with historical and legendary anecdotes — whether filial, loyalist, romantic, or escapist — permeates both elite painting and the new medium of blue-and-white porcelain in the 14th century, making the Yuan one of the great ages of narrative visual storytelling in Chinese art history.
The handscroll Five Drunken Princes Returning from Court on Horseback (五王醉歸圖) by Ren Renfa (任仁發, 1255–1328), a leading painter-official of the Yuan dynasty, is one of the most celebrated narrative paintings of the period. Its two high-profile auction appearances (Poly Beijing, 4 December 2016, sold for RMB 303.6 million / US$44 million; Sotheby’s Hong Kong, 8 October 2020, sold for HK$306.5 million / US$39.5 million) underscore its status as a cultural treasure.
To understand the painting in the broader context of Yuan-dynasty narrative trends in both paintings and porcelains, especially concerning “legends,” we must look at what kinds of stories were popular and why.
1. The Story Depicted in Ren Renfa’s Painting
The painting illustrates a famous anecdote from the Cao-Wei period (Three Kingdoms era, 3rd century): the “Five Princes of Ye” — Cao Cao’s sons Cao Pi, Cao Zhi, Cao Zhang, Cao Zhi, and Cao Biao — returning drunk from a banquet given by their father. The most famous literary source is Cao Zhi’s poem 《名都篇》 (“Song of the Capital”), which contains the line “王子侯歸醉” (The princes and marquises return drunk). Although historically the event is tied to Cao Cao’s court at Ye, by the Song and Yuan periods it had become a legendary tale of fraternal camaraderie, literary talent (especially Cao Zhi’s genius), and aristocratic indulgence.
Ren Renfa transforms this into a humorous, almost satirical tableau: the five princes are so inebriated that they can barely stay on their horses, supported by grooms and attendants. The painting is both a virtuoso display of horse painting (Ren was famous for it) and a gentle parody of princely dignity.
2. Broader Narrative Trends in Yuan Painting and Porcelain Concerning Legends
During the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), under Mongol rule, Chinese scholars and artists often felt politically marginalized. This led to a pronounced interest in historical and legendary anecdotes that carried moral, escapist, or subtly political meanings.
A. In Painting (handscrolls and album leaves)
Popular legendary themes included:
- Filial piety legends (Twenty-four Filial Exemplars stories, such as Guo Ju burying his son, or Wang Xiang lying on ice)
- Recluse and immortality legends (the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, the Four Greybeards of Mount Shang, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Liezi)
- Loyalty and righteous knight-errant tales (Jing Ke’s attempted assassination of Qin Shi Huang, Zhuge Liang legends)
- Romantic and tragic love legends (Xiao and Qing — the “White Snake” story begins to appear, Butterfly Lovers)
- Literati indulgence legends (the Five Drunken Princes, Ruan Ji’s “drunkenness” from the Bamboo Grove, Li Bai’s drunken poetry)
B. In Porcelain (especially blue-and-white of the mid-14th century)
When blue-and-white porcelain exploded in sophistication under the late Yuan (especially 1330s–1360s, the “Tochto phase”), narrative scenes became extremely common on large jars, dishes, and flasks. The most frequently depicted legendary stories were:
- The Ghost of Zhong Kui hunting demons (very common — protective meaning)
- Wang Xizhi Observing Geese (literati elegance)
- Su Wu herding sheep (loyalty to Han dynasty while captive among the Xiongnu — highly resonant under Mongol rule by “northern barbarians”)
- Guo Ziyi’s success and wealth (filial piety and loyalty rewarded)
- The Four Loves (Zhou Dunyi loving lotus, Tao Yuanming loving chrysanthemums, Lin Hejing loving cranes and plum blossoms)
- Knife-horse figures (xiao yong (brave generals from Three Kingdoms or Tang, such as Zhao Yun or Xue Rengui)
- Immortals and Daoist paradises (Eight Immortals, Queen Mother of the West)
3. Why Legends Flourished in Yuan Art
- Political alienation: Han Chinese literati could not openly criticize Mongol rule, so they turned to historical allegory and historical legends (loyalty to Han in Su Wu, resistance in Jing Ke).
- Escapism and humor: Drunkenness, reclusion, and immortality offered psychological escape (Ren Renfa’s humorous take on the princes fits perfectly).
- Commercial and export demand: By the late Yuan, blue-and-white porcelain was being made partly for Middle-Eastern and Southeast-Asian markets, which loved narrative scenes with moral or magical content.
- Technical advances: The development of large handscroll format and underglaze cobalt painting allowed complex multi-figure stories to be rendered with unprecedented detail.
Ren Renfa’s Five Drunken Princes Returning on Horseback is a quintessential expression of Yuan narrative taste: a light-hearted, slightly ironic treatment of a famous pre-Song legend that celebrates literary culture and aristocratic excess while subtly reminding viewers of a lost era of Han Chinese dominance. This same fascination with historical and legendary anecdotes — whether filial, loyalist, romantic, or escapist — permeates both elite painting and the new medium of blue-and-white porcelain in the 14th century, making the Yuan one of the great ages of narrative visual storytelling in Chinese art history.
1765 Gimcrack by Stubbs
2011 SOLD for £ 22.4M by Christie's
Serving wealthy English aristocrats, George Stubbs specialized in the topic of race horses. On December 8, 2010, Sotheby's sold £ 10.1M a very elegant study of mares and foals in a meadow, painted in 1767.
A horse named Gimcrack was winning most of the races where he was engaged. His portrait was sold for £ 22.4M by Christie's on July 5, 2011, lot 12.
Made around 1765, this broad composition, oil on canvas 102 x 196 cm, simple and effective, is divided into two parts. On the left, Gimcrack shows his beautiful profile, surrounded by a coach, a stable boy and a jockey.
A race is held on the horizon, on the right. A horse is far ahead of his three followers. He is also Gimcrack, of course. He is therefore shown twice on that image that had everything to flatter the sponsor of the work, Lord Bolingbroke, owner of the champion.
Stubbs is very accurate in anatomical detail, but still shows horses galloping with their four legs flying above the ground. This feature, which can be excused one century before the studies of Muybridge, applies here only in the background and provides this work with an undeniable poetic dimension.
A horse named Gimcrack was winning most of the races where he was engaged. His portrait was sold for £ 22.4M by Christie's on July 5, 2011, lot 12.
Made around 1765, this broad composition, oil on canvas 102 x 196 cm, simple and effective, is divided into two parts. On the left, Gimcrack shows his beautiful profile, surrounded by a coach, a stable boy and a jockey.
A race is held on the horizon, on the right. A horse is far ahead of his three followers. He is also Gimcrack, of course. He is therefore shown twice on that image that had everything to flatter the sponsor of the work, Lord Bolingbroke, owner of the champion.
Stubbs is very accurate in anatomical detail, but still shows horses galloping with their four legs flying above the ground. This feature, which can be excused one century before the studies of Muybridge, applies here only in the background and provides this work with an undeniable poetic dimension.
Significance in the artist's career and in horse racing history.
The Painting
George Stubbs' "Gimcrack with John Pratt Up on Newmarket Heath" (oil on canvas, 1765) is one of the most iconic images in British sporting art. It depicts the celebrated racehorse Gimcrack, a small grey colt, with his jockey John Pratt in the colors of his owner, the 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke. In the background Stubbs included a famous “rubbing-down house” (a shelter where horses were cooled off after exercise) on Newmarket Heath, giving the picture a strong sense of place.
The painting was commissioned by Gimcrack’s first important owner, Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, and remained in the family until it was sold at Christie’s London on 5 July 2011 for £22,441,250 (approximately $36 million at the time), still the world-record auction price for a British sporting painting and for any work by George Stubbs.
Significance in George Stubbs’ Career
Gimcrack (foaled 1760) was one of the most famous racehorses of the 18th century despite being unusually small (barely 14.1 hands):
When the painting appeared at Christie’s in 2011 after almost 250 years in the same family (Woolavington Collection), it caused a sensation:
The Painting
George Stubbs' "Gimcrack with John Pratt Up on Newmarket Heath" (oil on canvas, 1765) is one of the most iconic images in British sporting art. It depicts the celebrated racehorse Gimcrack, a small grey colt, with his jockey John Pratt in the colors of his owner, the 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke. In the background Stubbs included a famous “rubbing-down house” (a shelter where horses were cooled off after exercise) on Newmarket Heath, giving the picture a strong sense of place.
The painting was commissioned by Gimcrack’s first important owner, Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, and remained in the family until it was sold at Christie’s London on 5 July 2011 for £22,441,250 (approximately $36 million at the time), still the world-record auction price for a British sporting painting and for any work by George Stubbs.
Significance in George Stubbs’ Career
- This is arguably Stubbs’ most famous single horse portrait and the one that cemented his reputation as the greatest painter of racehorses in history.
- Painted in 1765, it came at the absolute peak of Stubbs’ powers, shortly after the publication of his revolutionary book The Anatomy of the Horse (1766), which had established him as both an artist and a serious equine anatomist.
- The picture shows Stubbs’ mature style in full: astonishingly accurate anatomy combined with luminous atmospheric effects, subtle greys and silvers in the horse’s coat, and a low horizon that makes the horse appear heroic against the vast Suffolk sky.
- It was one of the first paintings in which Stubbs placed a named, contemporary Thoroughbred in a specific landscape setting rather than the more generic parkland backgrounds of earlier portraits. This innovation became his signature format and influenced generations of sporting artists.
- Gimcrack was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1766 (one of only three paintings Stubbs ever exhibited in his lifetime), bringing him enormous publicity at exactly the moment he was establishing his independent studio in London.
Gimcrack (foaled 1760) was one of the most famous racehorses of the 18th century despite being unusually small (barely 14.1 hands):
- He raced an extraordinary 36 times between 1764 and 1771 and won 27 of those races (a remarkable record for the era of long-distance heat racing).
- His most celebrated victory was beating the previously unbeaten Pontac over four-mile heats at Newmarket in 1765 — the year Stubbs painted him.
- In 1768 he was sold to the Comte de Lauraguais and exported to France, where he won several races and became the first British horse to race successfully on the Continent, helping spread the fashion for English Thoroughbreds in Europe.
- After retirement he stood as a stallion in England again and sired a number of good runners, though he is more important historically than as a sire.
- Gimcrack’s fame was such that the Gimcrack Stakes (now a prestigious Group 2 race for two-year-olds at York) has been named after him since 1846, and the Gimcrack Dinner, one of the most important social events in British racing, is still held annually by the York Gimcrack Club.
When the painting appeared at Christie’s in 2011 after almost 250 years in the same family (Woolavington Collection), it caused a sensation:
- It shattered the previous record for Stubbs (£10.1 million for “Broodmares and Foals” in 1996).
- It remains the most expensive sporting picture and the most expensive Old Master painting ever sold at auction in London.
- It was bought by an anonymous bidder (later revealed to be the British art dealer Simon Dickinson acting for a private collector) and is now on long-term loan to the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, where it can be seen by the public.
#GeorgeStubbs was born #OTD in 1724. We sold Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath in 2011 for £22,441,250 #WorldAuctionRecord #artistbirthday pic.twitter.com/B7fCB2eivD
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) August 25, 2017
1872 Les Courses au Bois de Boulogne by Manet
2004 SOLD for $ 26.3M by Sotheby's
Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas have masterfully shaken up the classicism. Building on their predecessors, they find new ideas for staging and colors.
Manet easily entered into artist circles. He enjoys social life and does not wait for the recognition of the Salons. His themes are unlimited. Before him, Courbet went already complacently up to the scandal. Baudelaire and then Zola recognize the originality of his approach.
On May 5, 2004, Sotheby's sold for $ 26.3M Les Courses au Bois de Boulogne, oil on canvas 73 x 94 cm painted in 1872 by Manet, lot 13, from the collection of one of the most famous owners of racehorses, John Hay Whitney. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
The artist skillfully mixed observation and imitation. It seems that the topography of the Longchamp racecourse was painted on the spot.
Manet had demonstrated a few years earlier in his first bullfighting scenes that a direct participation in the event was not essential, since he could rely on Goya. Here the horses in full gallop all fly with their four legs lifted, as in the Epsom Derby painted by Géricault in 1821, acquired by the Louvre in 1866. The imperturbable position of the jockeys in full race is not realistic : the sporting effort was obviously not appreciated by Manet.
Manet's painting is however very modern. The track and the lawn are aquamarine blue, highlighting the contrasts in a freedom of colors that anticipates expressionism for several decades. The distance of the subjects is marked by an increasing blur, as if it were a photograph focused on the action in progress in the foreground. This artifice provides the whole composition with an effect of depth, different from the solutions sought by his impressionist friends.
Manet easily entered into artist circles. He enjoys social life and does not wait for the recognition of the Salons. His themes are unlimited. Before him, Courbet went already complacently up to the scandal. Baudelaire and then Zola recognize the originality of his approach.
On May 5, 2004, Sotheby's sold for $ 26.3M Les Courses au Bois de Boulogne, oil on canvas 73 x 94 cm painted in 1872 by Manet, lot 13, from the collection of one of the most famous owners of racehorses, John Hay Whitney. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
The artist skillfully mixed observation and imitation. It seems that the topography of the Longchamp racecourse was painted on the spot.
Manet had demonstrated a few years earlier in his first bullfighting scenes that a direct participation in the event was not essential, since he could rely on Goya. Here the horses in full gallop all fly with their four legs lifted, as in the Epsom Derby painted by Géricault in 1821, acquired by the Louvre in 1866. The imperturbable position of the jockeys in full race is not realistic : the sporting effort was obviously not appreciated by Manet.
Manet's painting is however very modern. The track and the lawn are aquamarine blue, highlighting the contrasts in a freedom of colors that anticipates expressionism for several decades. The distance of the subjects is marked by an increasing blur, as if it were a photograph focused on the action in progress in the foreground. This artifice provides the whole composition with an effect of depth, different from the solutions sought by his impressionist friends.
1910 Polo Crowd by Bellows
1999 SOLD for $ 27.5 M by Sotheby's
Crowds in New York are one of the favorite themes with which Georges Bellows shows enthusiasm, movement, play. In 1909 he adds sport. His boxing paintings show the action in progress, in a close-up snapshot that photography was only just beginning to be able to provide. The expressive style of the young artist marks his refusal of classicism.
Polo Crowd, oil on canvas 115 x 160 cm painted in 1910, confronts sport and its spectators. The game is on, including a prancing horse. The crowd, barely contained by light barriers, is made up of well-differentiated characters, as in real life. In a very dynamic contrast, peoples and horses appear bright against a very dark sky.
Bequeathed in 1998 by the Whitney estate to the Museum of Modern Art, Polo Crowd was sold by Sotheby's on December 1, 1999 for $ 27.5M from a lower estimate of $ 10M. It was purchased at that sale by Bill Gates who was to hang it in the lobby of his personal library. The image is shared by Artnet.
Polo Crowd, oil on canvas 115 x 160 cm painted in 1910, confronts sport and its spectators. The game is on, including a prancing horse. The crowd, barely contained by light barriers, is made up of well-differentiated characters, as in real life. In a very dynamic contrast, peoples and horses appear bright against a very dark sky.
Bequeathed in 1998 by the Whitney estate to the Museum of Modern Art, Polo Crowd was sold by Sotheby's on December 1, 1999 for $ 27.5M from a lower estimate of $ 10M. It was purchased at that sale by Bill Gates who was to hang it in the lobby of his personal library. The image is shared by Artnet.
MARC
Franz Marc was convinced that beauty is not a characteristic of man but of nature. Illustrator of animals and landscapes, he was then influenced by the expressive lines of van Gogh and by the pure colors of Gauguin. Marc attributes to his animals symbolic colors devoid of any realism unlike his own landscapes and the Fauvist practice of excessive color. His first major composition of horses dates from 1908.
The meeting of Kandinsky and Marc in September 1910 is highly important for modern art. The quest for a new symbolism by Marc influenced the hermetic researches of Kandinsky. Marc's ambition in modern art was to get rid of ancient culture including religion, monarchy, privileges and humanism.
Marc tries in his turn to codify his own colors for exacerbating the feelings. He uses Fauvist colors with a symbolist code of his invention : blue for the authoritarian male and yellow for the sweet female when they are peaceful, and dark red to express an antithesis that breaks the harmony of nature, for example revolt and violence.
Their movement is identified from late 1911 as the Blaue Reiter, a striking image that symbolizes in two words the new art better than the complex theories of Kandinsky could have done.
Franz Marc also rejects the modern life which is dominated by the machine. He seeks truth in Nature. His work displays a great diversity of animals, whose symbiosis with nature is a support for a harmony of forms.
The horse occupies the best place in Marc's art. The natural attitude of this animal is varied but always elegant. A group of horses is the pretext for building a perfect balance. With an image brought by Kandinsky, the horse becomes a powerful symbol of modern art when the two artists create the Der Blaue Reiter movement in 1911.
Grosse Landschaft I (large landscape I) shows a group of mares. This oil on burlap 110 x 212 cm painted in 1909 passed at Sotheby's on February 3, 2016, lot 6. The main theme of this artwork is not indeed the landscape, a very ordinary meadow, but the group of four horses in attentive attitudes, all in the same color between orange and light red.
The meeting of Kandinsky and Marc in September 1910 is highly important for modern art. The quest for a new symbolism by Marc influenced the hermetic researches of Kandinsky. Marc's ambition in modern art was to get rid of ancient culture including religion, monarchy, privileges and humanism.
Marc tries in his turn to codify his own colors for exacerbating the feelings. He uses Fauvist colors with a symbolist code of his invention : blue for the authoritarian male and yellow for the sweet female when they are peaceful, and dark red to express an antithesis that breaks the harmony of nature, for example revolt and violence.
Their movement is identified from late 1911 as the Blaue Reiter, a striking image that symbolizes in two words the new art better than the complex theories of Kandinsky could have done.
Franz Marc also rejects the modern life which is dominated by the machine. He seeks truth in Nature. His work displays a great diversity of animals, whose symbiosis with nature is a support for a harmony of forms.
The horse occupies the best place in Marc's art. The natural attitude of this animal is varied but always elegant. A group of horses is the pretext for building a perfect balance. With an image brought by Kandinsky, the horse becomes a powerful symbol of modern art when the two artists create the Der Blaue Reiter movement in 1911.
Grosse Landschaft I (large landscape I) shows a group of mares. This oil on burlap 110 x 212 cm painted in 1909 passed at Sotheby's on February 3, 2016, lot 6. The main theme of this artwork is not indeed the landscape, a very ordinary meadow, but the group of four horses in attentive attitudes, all in the same color between orange and light red.
1
1910 Weidende Pferde
2008 SOLD for £ 12.3M by Sotheby's
In the spring and summer of 1910 the 30 years old artist Franz Marc was acquainted with the work of the Fauvistes and of Signac, Hodler and Gauguin through exhibitions in Berlin and Munich.
In a first version of Weidende Pferde, executed in the summer of 1910, he explores the use of individual brush strokes of pure color set next to one another on a white ground.
Weidende Pferde III (grazing horses III) stages four fiery males, each one in another attitude. The coats are red but manes and tails are blue. This oil on canvas 61 x 92 cm painted in 1910 was sold for £ 12.3M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2008 from a lower estimate of £ 6M, lot 13. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
In that experimental phase Franz Marc also makes his hand with Signac's pointillism in two oils on canvas on animal themes.
One of them, displaying flamingoes, was destroyed during the Second World War.
The other example, Springende Pferde, matches Marc's signature quest of interpreting the mood of three horses with no rider. Their competing leaps over hurdles are deliberately joyful. This oil on canvas 150 x 160 cm painted in the autumn of 1910 was sold for £ 3.74M by Christie's on June 23, 2009, lot 11.
In a first version of Weidende Pferde, executed in the summer of 1910, he explores the use of individual brush strokes of pure color set next to one another on a white ground.
Weidende Pferde III (grazing horses III) stages four fiery males, each one in another attitude. The coats are red but manes and tails are blue. This oil on canvas 61 x 92 cm painted in 1910 was sold for £ 12.3M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2008 from a lower estimate of £ 6M, lot 13. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
In that experimental phase Franz Marc also makes his hand with Signac's pointillism in two oils on canvas on animal themes.
One of them, displaying flamingoes, was destroyed during the Second World War.
The other example, Springende Pferde, matches Marc's signature quest of interpreting the mood of three horses with no rider. Their competing leaps over hurdles are deliberately joyful. This oil on canvas 150 x 160 cm painted in the autumn of 1910 was sold for £ 3.74M by Christie's on June 23, 2009, lot 11.
2
1912 Drei Pferde
2018 SOLD for £ 15.4M by Christie's
Art on paper or cardboard allows a great vividness of colors. Drei Pferde (three horses), gouache on card 34 x 48 cm executed in 1912 by Franz Marc, was sold for £ 15.4M by Christie's on June 20, 2018 from a lower estimate of £ 2.5M, lot 14 B. Horses have a realistic shape but are surrounded by a cubist landscape.
Made in the same year, Zwei Blaue Esel (two blue donkeys), gouache on paper 35 x 28 cm, was sold for £ 4.1M by Sotheby's on February 4, 2020, lot 7.
Made in the same year, Zwei Blaue Esel (two blue donkeys), gouache on paper 35 x 28 cm, was sold for £ 4.1M by Sotheby's on February 4, 2020, lot 7.
#AuctionUpdate ‘Drei Pferde’ by #FranzMarc achieves £15,421,250, more than 4 x the high estimate, making a new #WorldAuctionRecord for the artist. pic.twitter.com/Zk9zGc2j8G
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) June 20, 2018
1932 Wheels by Yun Gee
2017 SOLD for HK$ 105M by Sotheby's
At the turn of the 1930s the big event in Manhattan was the construction of the Chrysler Building and of the Empire State Building which forever changed the look and feel of New York City and triggered the development of a new art.
Created in 1929 by Mrs Rockefeller and two of her friends, the Museum Of Modern Art has a difficult start due to local reluctance to changes. Moving to more spacious premises the MoMA plans a new inauguration in May 1932 with an exhibition titled Murals promoting American painters and photographers.
Six weeks before the great re-opening each invited artist is required to create a large size painting and a triptych. The Chinese-born American Yun Gee aged 26 is the youngest of the selected artists.
It was a good choice : painter, musician and dancer, Yun Gee had been in contact with the avant-gardes, first in the Chinatown of San Francisco and then in Paris before he settled in New York in 1930. Taking advantage of this multiple culture he sought to develop a total art mixing expressive colors and movement and embracing past and future to define the new life.
The triptych made for the MoMA was sold for HK $ 10.8M by Sotheby's on October 5, 2014.
The masterpiece of Yun Gee is his other work for the MoMA, oil on canvas 214 x 122 cm titled Wheels: Industrial New York. Wheels means the circles of human activities turning into vertigo under the skyscrapers.
Yun Gee's surrealist synthesis of the avant-gardes around his belief in progress makes Wheels a tour de force. The abundance of the activities is displayed in an expressionist style, the shaking of the perspectives is cubist, the circular merry go round of the polo team in the foreground is futurist, the warm colors are fauvist under a haunting sun and the theme is by itself constructivist.
Kept until now in the artist's family, Wheels: Industrial New York was sold for HK $ 105M from a lower estimate of HK $ 80M by Sotheby's on September 30, 2017, lot 1017. Please watch the video shared by the auction house in which the CG technology promoted by Sotheby's for new visual effects highlights the expression of movement in the composition.
Created in 1929 by Mrs Rockefeller and two of her friends, the Museum Of Modern Art has a difficult start due to local reluctance to changes. Moving to more spacious premises the MoMA plans a new inauguration in May 1932 with an exhibition titled Murals promoting American painters and photographers.
Six weeks before the great re-opening each invited artist is required to create a large size painting and a triptych. The Chinese-born American Yun Gee aged 26 is the youngest of the selected artists.
It was a good choice : painter, musician and dancer, Yun Gee had been in contact with the avant-gardes, first in the Chinatown of San Francisco and then in Paris before he settled in New York in 1930. Taking advantage of this multiple culture he sought to develop a total art mixing expressive colors and movement and embracing past and future to define the new life.
The triptych made for the MoMA was sold for HK $ 10.8M by Sotheby's on October 5, 2014.
The masterpiece of Yun Gee is his other work for the MoMA, oil on canvas 214 x 122 cm titled Wheels: Industrial New York. Wheels means the circles of human activities turning into vertigo under the skyscrapers.
Yun Gee's surrealist synthesis of the avant-gardes around his belief in progress makes Wheels a tour de force. The abundance of the activities is displayed in an expressionist style, the shaking of the perspectives is cubist, the circular merry go round of the polo team in the foreground is futurist, the warm colors are fauvist under a haunting sun and the theme is by itself constructivist.
Kept until now in the artist's family, Wheels: Industrial New York was sold for HK $ 105M from a lower estimate of HK $ 80M by Sotheby's on September 30, 2017, lot 1017. Please watch the video shared by the auction house in which the CG technology promoted by Sotheby's for new visual effects highlights the expression of movement in the composition.
1945 The Song of the Pipa Player by Fu Baoshi
2025 SOLD for HK$ 460M by Sincerity
THE POEM AND ITS HOLD ON FU BAOSHI
Bai Juyi’s long Tang poem The Song of the Pipa Player (琵琶行), composed in 816, is a masterpiece of realistic song, admired for its intense emotion and recited and illustrated in China for some 1,200 years. A fallen politician drifts away on a chilly autumn night until he hears the lute and the song of an aging woman who has lost her appeal and been dismissed from court. The encounter on the Xunyang River yields the line that governs every later picture: both are fallen people at the world’s edge, and they need not have known each other before. Fu Baoshi (1904–1965) took that theme of shared exile as his own during the Sino-Japanese War, when he was displaced to Chongqing. The inspiration reaches back as well to his years of training in Japan, where literary painting and a precise, emotionally legible figure style left a lasting mark. In his view the artist had to be completely imbued with the literary model in order to recreate its atmosphere, not merely to inventory its props. He considered that the painter must absorb the poem until night, autumn, music, and recognition could be rebuilt as weather on paper.
THE JINGANGPO YEARS AND THE SERIES
From 1939 to 1946 Fu lived at Jingangpo (Diamond Slope) in the western suburbs of Chongqing. Personal hardship, fog, and exile mirrored Bai’s demotion and the pipa player’s ruined capital career. In 1944 and 1945, in trials of increasing complication, he composed visual interpretations that try to bring all the significant elements into one night: the man and the woman, the colors of autumn, moonlight, horse and attendants, and the stalled farewell. At the same time he was working on Qu Yuan’s political poems and on the symbolic role of ghosts in Taoism, so Pipa Xing belongs with Liren Xing, Shan Gui, and the Nine Songs cycle as wartime history painting rather than antique genre. His daughter Fu Yiyao recalled that the earliest lady paintings she remembered were Pipa Xing pictures: first still outline-and-fill, faces and hands in white pigment, embroidered robes and even maple and cabin double-outlined and filled; then fully wet-ink, splash-and-wash versions in his own manner. He created multiple mid-1940s versions, blending traditional guohua with innovative brushwork, dramatic lighting, and emotional depth. These works represent the pinnacle of his figure painting before the post-1949 shift toward landscapes. Known versions from this campaign include museum pictures in Nanjing, the tightly dated 1945 scroll later sold twice at Christie's, a large undated poem-intent scroll sold twice in Beijing, smaller Jingangpo sheets, and a tall 2025 lot reported at CITIC International Auction in Hong Kong.
THE 1944 NANJING MUSEUM PICTURES
Nanjing holds more than one Pipa Xing. An early hanging scroll, 118 × 35 cm, dated 1944, portrays the singing woman listened to by the poet and the guest on a shore, in a boat or a pavilion: a relatively simple three-person narrative that has not yet left traditional deep-distance and level-distance construction. Another Nanjing work is dated to spring 1944 (甲申之春) and is treated as a definitive early full rendition: a nocturnal riverside with the pipa player, Bai Juyi, guests, attendants, and a horse, divided by a central maple. A further Nanjing picture, published as among the museum’s finest on the theme and often given as 68.9 × 143.2 cm, already writes six figures and a horse in a left-upper / right-lower arrangement, the huge maple covering heaven and pressing the earth, with the diagonal grouping only beginning. That six-figure design is usually dated by the museum to 1944 even when the artist left no full year inscription; Christie's later treated it as the compositional step immediately before the 1945 Kong scroll. Across these museum pictures the melancholy is already in place: refined figure drawing with a memory of Gu Kaizhi, moonlight, and a tree used as architecture. They are foundational, permanently housed, and invaluable as reference rather than as market objects.
THE 1945 KONG XIANGXI SCROLL
The hanging scroll 113 × 66 cm, ink and color on paper, is dated 乙酉驚蟄前二日蜀中寫, 傅抱石—two days before Jingzhe in the yiyou year, that is 4 March 1945, in Sichuan. Seals include 抱石之印, 抱石得心之作 (“a work from the heart,” a rare mark of the artist’s own satisfaction), and 踪迹大化. Provenance is the family of K'ung Hsiang-Hsi (Kong Xiangxi). It appeared as Christie's Hong Kong 30 November 2010, lot 2640, where it sold for about HK$70 million and set a record for Fu at that date; it returned as a single-lot evening sale, An Ode to the Past, on 28 November 2017, lot 8801, hammer HK$180 million, price realized HK$204.85 million (about US$26 million). The composition is one of the most complex Fu made on the theme. At the ends of a diagonal sit two well-separated groups of three. The foreground group is servants with a saddled horse, answering “seeing off a guest at Xunyang.” The main group—the politician-poet in the blue robe of “the Jiangzhou Sima’s gown is wet,” a friend, and the musician—appears through the big maple, a placement that has been compared with the way Taoist gods are sited in the sky. Compared with the 1944 museum designs, the 1945 picture is bolder: an oversized maple creates tension and splits inner chamber from outer bank; light and shadow are more theatrical, with moonlight on the river and a half moon at upper right; faces are more expressive; foliage is freer. Figures are finely drawn in a tradition of Japanese figuration that lets sadness show in the woman’s face and tears in the eyes of the men. Christie's presented it as the mature statement of the series, comparable to the best museum holdings and the peak of Fu’s figure and poetic painting at the end of the war.
THE MID-1940S POEM-INTENT SCROLL Another view, hanging scroll about 178 × 56 cm, is titled 琵琶行诗意 (The Song of the Pipa Player Poem Intent). It is undated and given by Poly to circa 1944–1945. The inscription quotes Guo Moruo: “The Jiangzhou Sima’s blue robe is wet; one pipa tune holds the departing sails. Even the horse bows its head and turns back; only cold moonlight fills the mid-sky. Guo Moruo’s poem. Fu Baoshi wrote this in East Sichuan.” Seals include 抱石私印, 踪迹大化, and 往往醉后. The same group of three appears on the shore in a bright aperture through a tree. The image is sharply focused by the bright color of the singing woman’s shirt; her lute is shown full front. The white horse drinks on the other bank of the river. A landscape opens in the upper register: moon, distant houses, a pulled-back environment rather than the packed night of the Kong scroll. It is a closer, more lyrical concentration on the player’s intensity, with fewer attendants than the six-figure dramas, yet not a pure close-up, because river, moon, and far shore remain. It sold at China Guardian on 13 November 2011, lot 1222, for RMB 82.8 million, and again at Poly on 17 June 2018, lot 1779, for RMB 103.5 million. An image of this lot has circulated through Artnet. High-quality public photographs remain scarcer than for the 2017 Christie's picture, but the work belongs securely to the same mid-1940s poetic melancholy and ink-wash language.
THE 2025 CITIC INTERNATIONAL LOT On 25 May 2025, at CITIC International Auction’s 2025 Spring Art Treasures Auction (Phase II) in Hong Kong, a large Pipa Xing reported as 180 × 67 cm opened at HK$320 million and hammered at HK$410 million, described in sale reports as a 1940s representative work and as resetting Fu’s personal auction record. Public accounts praise unrestrained brush and call it a peak figure painting after Bai, but they have not circulated an inscription transcription, seal list, or provenance essay comparable to the Christie's catalog. The reported width, 67 cm, is almost identical to the Kong scroll’s 66 cm; the height is much greater. The lot should not be collapsed with the 1945 Kong picture, which differs in size, documented date, and collection history. Until the CITIC object is published at the same density, it is a market event attached to the theme: a tall hanging claimant within the wartime family, not yet a fully argued third museum-grade document.
HOW THE VERSIONS RELATE
Date runs from spring 1944 (Nanjing three-figure and six-figure designs), to 4 March 1945 (Kong scroll), to an undated but stylistically mid-1940s large shi yi (Guardian/Poly), with the CITIC canvas reported only as 1940s. Composition moves from a balanced group or boat-and-shore narrative, through intense diagonal tension and an oversized maple that stages two groups of three, to a closer focus on the player in a bright gap of trees with horse and landscape set farther off. Technique moves from refined classical figures and subtle moonlight, to bolder foliage, strong light-shadow contrast, and more explicit faces, to intimate color on the woman’s garment and a full-frontal lute. Mood moves from foundational melancholy with traditional roots, to peak theatrical confidence, to poetic intimacy and environmental depth. Size and provenance move from museum inalienability, to 113 × 66 cm and the K'ung family with two Christie's sales, to the larger 178 × 56 cm private-to-auction scroll sold in 2011 and 2018, to the still taller 180 × 67 cm CITIC result of 2025. The 1944 pictures establish the structure. The 1945 Kong scroll refines it into the boldest documented masterpiece. The mid-1940s Poly variant offers a lyrical, focused variation. Shared figure groups do not make the taller CITIC sheet a “master” of which the Kong scroll is a reduction. Fu reused blocks as a method; width is nearly the same while height grows; and the published sequence already runs Nanjing 1944 six-figure design toward the more resolved 1945 picture. A date for the CITIC lot in late 1944 to 1945 is plausible only if its cast, horse, and maple match that family. Calling it the parent of the Kong scroll would require its inscription, seals, and a stroke-level comparison that have not been published.
TECHNIQUE AND MEANING
Fu’s revolutionary style fuses literati tradition with bold, expressive brush—the scattered-tip, mixed-texture method often nicknamed Baoshi cun or, in one account, a “hugashi splash”—and with a Western-inflected sense of chiaroscuro used for emotional depth rather than for academic modeling. Scholarly caution is useful: Xiao Ping has argued that “Baoshi cun” is a misleading single name, because Fu mixes hemp, brushwood, axe-cut, lotus-leaf, and dragged-mud strokes. What matters for Pipa Xing is that the same loosened brush builds maple, night air, and drapery. The tree is not a backdrop; it is the climate of the poem. Sound is not painted as Bai’s onomatopoeia of great and small strings, but translated into weather, foliage, and the stillness of listeners. Color stays local and restrained—a red or bright garment, maple, Bai’s blue—so ink remains the night. Seals such as 踪迹大化 state the program of tracing nature’s transformations; 抱石得心之作 on the 1945 scroll marks a version Fu considered solved. The Japanese-trained fine drawing of faces is what lets the woman’s sadness and the men’s tears become readable without turning the picture into illustration.
PLACE IN THE CAREER
These mid-1940s Pipa Player works mark the height of Fu’s figure painting in the Diamond Slope years, when hardship and the poem’s exile were the same subject. They sit beside the Qu Yuan pictures, which give tragic isolation, and Liren Xing, which gives social satire; Pipa Xing is the most intimate of the group because its central act is listening. Fu had already argued that when thought changes, brush and ink cannot but change. Here a Tang poem is rebuilt with wartime space, scattered-tip landscape method, and modern psychological weather. After 1949, political conditions favored landscape and Mao-poem pictures; he rarely returned to figures with this freedom. That makes the series a scarce testament to pre-liberation invention and one of the iconic bodies of twentieth-century Chinese painting. Market history follows the same arc: museum inalienability for the 1944 designs; HK$70 million in 2010 and HK$204.85 million in 2017 for the Kong scroll; RMB 82.8 million in 2011 and RMB 103.5 million in 2018 for the large poem-intent scroll; and a reported HK$410 million hammer in 2025 for the CITIC canvas. The prices record scarcity and desire. The pictures themselves record a wartime painter who had learned, from Bai and from Japan and from Sichuan fog, how to make a night listen.
Bai Juyi’s long Tang poem The Song of the Pipa Player (琵琶行), composed in 816, is a masterpiece of realistic song, admired for its intense emotion and recited and illustrated in China for some 1,200 years. A fallen politician drifts away on a chilly autumn night until he hears the lute and the song of an aging woman who has lost her appeal and been dismissed from court. The encounter on the Xunyang River yields the line that governs every later picture: both are fallen people at the world’s edge, and they need not have known each other before. Fu Baoshi (1904–1965) took that theme of shared exile as his own during the Sino-Japanese War, when he was displaced to Chongqing. The inspiration reaches back as well to his years of training in Japan, where literary painting and a precise, emotionally legible figure style left a lasting mark. In his view the artist had to be completely imbued with the literary model in order to recreate its atmosphere, not merely to inventory its props. He considered that the painter must absorb the poem until night, autumn, music, and recognition could be rebuilt as weather on paper.
THE JINGANGPO YEARS AND THE SERIES
From 1939 to 1946 Fu lived at Jingangpo (Diamond Slope) in the western suburbs of Chongqing. Personal hardship, fog, and exile mirrored Bai’s demotion and the pipa player’s ruined capital career. In 1944 and 1945, in trials of increasing complication, he composed visual interpretations that try to bring all the significant elements into one night: the man and the woman, the colors of autumn, moonlight, horse and attendants, and the stalled farewell. At the same time he was working on Qu Yuan’s political poems and on the symbolic role of ghosts in Taoism, so Pipa Xing belongs with Liren Xing, Shan Gui, and the Nine Songs cycle as wartime history painting rather than antique genre. His daughter Fu Yiyao recalled that the earliest lady paintings she remembered were Pipa Xing pictures: first still outline-and-fill, faces and hands in white pigment, embroidered robes and even maple and cabin double-outlined and filled; then fully wet-ink, splash-and-wash versions in his own manner. He created multiple mid-1940s versions, blending traditional guohua with innovative brushwork, dramatic lighting, and emotional depth. These works represent the pinnacle of his figure painting before the post-1949 shift toward landscapes. Known versions from this campaign include museum pictures in Nanjing, the tightly dated 1945 scroll later sold twice at Christie's, a large undated poem-intent scroll sold twice in Beijing, smaller Jingangpo sheets, and a tall 2025 lot reported at CITIC International Auction in Hong Kong.
THE 1944 NANJING MUSEUM PICTURES
Nanjing holds more than one Pipa Xing. An early hanging scroll, 118 × 35 cm, dated 1944, portrays the singing woman listened to by the poet and the guest on a shore, in a boat or a pavilion: a relatively simple three-person narrative that has not yet left traditional deep-distance and level-distance construction. Another Nanjing work is dated to spring 1944 (甲申之春) and is treated as a definitive early full rendition: a nocturnal riverside with the pipa player, Bai Juyi, guests, attendants, and a horse, divided by a central maple. A further Nanjing picture, published as among the museum’s finest on the theme and often given as 68.9 × 143.2 cm, already writes six figures and a horse in a left-upper / right-lower arrangement, the huge maple covering heaven and pressing the earth, with the diagonal grouping only beginning. That six-figure design is usually dated by the museum to 1944 even when the artist left no full year inscription; Christie's later treated it as the compositional step immediately before the 1945 Kong scroll. Across these museum pictures the melancholy is already in place: refined figure drawing with a memory of Gu Kaizhi, moonlight, and a tree used as architecture. They are foundational, permanently housed, and invaluable as reference rather than as market objects.
THE 1945 KONG XIANGXI SCROLL
The hanging scroll 113 × 66 cm, ink and color on paper, is dated 乙酉驚蟄前二日蜀中寫, 傅抱石—two days before Jingzhe in the yiyou year, that is 4 March 1945, in Sichuan. Seals include 抱石之印, 抱石得心之作 (“a work from the heart,” a rare mark of the artist’s own satisfaction), and 踪迹大化. Provenance is the family of K'ung Hsiang-Hsi (Kong Xiangxi). It appeared as Christie's Hong Kong 30 November 2010, lot 2640, where it sold for about HK$70 million and set a record for Fu at that date; it returned as a single-lot evening sale, An Ode to the Past, on 28 November 2017, lot 8801, hammer HK$180 million, price realized HK$204.85 million (about US$26 million). The composition is one of the most complex Fu made on the theme. At the ends of a diagonal sit two well-separated groups of three. The foreground group is servants with a saddled horse, answering “seeing off a guest at Xunyang.” The main group—the politician-poet in the blue robe of “the Jiangzhou Sima’s gown is wet,” a friend, and the musician—appears through the big maple, a placement that has been compared with the way Taoist gods are sited in the sky. Compared with the 1944 museum designs, the 1945 picture is bolder: an oversized maple creates tension and splits inner chamber from outer bank; light and shadow are more theatrical, with moonlight on the river and a half moon at upper right; faces are more expressive; foliage is freer. Figures are finely drawn in a tradition of Japanese figuration that lets sadness show in the woman’s face and tears in the eyes of the men. Christie's presented it as the mature statement of the series, comparable to the best museum holdings and the peak of Fu’s figure and poetic painting at the end of the war.
THE MID-1940S POEM-INTENT SCROLL Another view, hanging scroll about 178 × 56 cm, is titled 琵琶行诗意 (The Song of the Pipa Player Poem Intent). It is undated and given by Poly to circa 1944–1945. The inscription quotes Guo Moruo: “The Jiangzhou Sima’s blue robe is wet; one pipa tune holds the departing sails. Even the horse bows its head and turns back; only cold moonlight fills the mid-sky. Guo Moruo’s poem. Fu Baoshi wrote this in East Sichuan.” Seals include 抱石私印, 踪迹大化, and 往往醉后. The same group of three appears on the shore in a bright aperture through a tree. The image is sharply focused by the bright color of the singing woman’s shirt; her lute is shown full front. The white horse drinks on the other bank of the river. A landscape opens in the upper register: moon, distant houses, a pulled-back environment rather than the packed night of the Kong scroll. It is a closer, more lyrical concentration on the player’s intensity, with fewer attendants than the six-figure dramas, yet not a pure close-up, because river, moon, and far shore remain. It sold at China Guardian on 13 November 2011, lot 1222, for RMB 82.8 million, and again at Poly on 17 June 2018, lot 1779, for RMB 103.5 million. An image of this lot has circulated through Artnet. High-quality public photographs remain scarcer than for the 2017 Christie's picture, but the work belongs securely to the same mid-1940s poetic melancholy and ink-wash language.
THE 2025 CITIC INTERNATIONAL LOT On 25 May 2025, at CITIC International Auction’s 2025 Spring Art Treasures Auction (Phase II) in Hong Kong, a large Pipa Xing reported as 180 × 67 cm opened at HK$320 million and hammered at HK$410 million, described in sale reports as a 1940s representative work and as resetting Fu’s personal auction record. Public accounts praise unrestrained brush and call it a peak figure painting after Bai, but they have not circulated an inscription transcription, seal list, or provenance essay comparable to the Christie's catalog. The reported width, 67 cm, is almost identical to the Kong scroll’s 66 cm; the height is much greater. The lot should not be collapsed with the 1945 Kong picture, which differs in size, documented date, and collection history. Until the CITIC object is published at the same density, it is a market event attached to the theme: a tall hanging claimant within the wartime family, not yet a fully argued third museum-grade document.
HOW THE VERSIONS RELATE
Date runs from spring 1944 (Nanjing three-figure and six-figure designs), to 4 March 1945 (Kong scroll), to an undated but stylistically mid-1940s large shi yi (Guardian/Poly), with the CITIC canvas reported only as 1940s. Composition moves from a balanced group or boat-and-shore narrative, through intense diagonal tension and an oversized maple that stages two groups of three, to a closer focus on the player in a bright gap of trees with horse and landscape set farther off. Technique moves from refined classical figures and subtle moonlight, to bolder foliage, strong light-shadow contrast, and more explicit faces, to intimate color on the woman’s garment and a full-frontal lute. Mood moves from foundational melancholy with traditional roots, to peak theatrical confidence, to poetic intimacy and environmental depth. Size and provenance move from museum inalienability, to 113 × 66 cm and the K'ung family with two Christie's sales, to the larger 178 × 56 cm private-to-auction scroll sold in 2011 and 2018, to the still taller 180 × 67 cm CITIC result of 2025. The 1944 pictures establish the structure. The 1945 Kong scroll refines it into the boldest documented masterpiece. The mid-1940s Poly variant offers a lyrical, focused variation. Shared figure groups do not make the taller CITIC sheet a “master” of which the Kong scroll is a reduction. Fu reused blocks as a method; width is nearly the same while height grows; and the published sequence already runs Nanjing 1944 six-figure design toward the more resolved 1945 picture. A date for the CITIC lot in late 1944 to 1945 is plausible only if its cast, horse, and maple match that family. Calling it the parent of the Kong scroll would require its inscription, seals, and a stroke-level comparison that have not been published.
TECHNIQUE AND MEANING
Fu’s revolutionary style fuses literati tradition with bold, expressive brush—the scattered-tip, mixed-texture method often nicknamed Baoshi cun or, in one account, a “hugashi splash”—and with a Western-inflected sense of chiaroscuro used for emotional depth rather than for academic modeling. Scholarly caution is useful: Xiao Ping has argued that “Baoshi cun” is a misleading single name, because Fu mixes hemp, brushwood, axe-cut, lotus-leaf, and dragged-mud strokes. What matters for Pipa Xing is that the same loosened brush builds maple, night air, and drapery. The tree is not a backdrop; it is the climate of the poem. Sound is not painted as Bai’s onomatopoeia of great and small strings, but translated into weather, foliage, and the stillness of listeners. Color stays local and restrained—a red or bright garment, maple, Bai’s blue—so ink remains the night. Seals such as 踪迹大化 state the program of tracing nature’s transformations; 抱石得心之作 on the 1945 scroll marks a version Fu considered solved. The Japanese-trained fine drawing of faces is what lets the woman’s sadness and the men’s tears become readable without turning the picture into illustration.
PLACE IN THE CAREER
These mid-1940s Pipa Player works mark the height of Fu’s figure painting in the Diamond Slope years, when hardship and the poem’s exile were the same subject. They sit beside the Qu Yuan pictures, which give tragic isolation, and Liren Xing, which gives social satire; Pipa Xing is the most intimate of the group because its central act is listening. Fu had already argued that when thought changes, brush and ink cannot but change. Here a Tang poem is rebuilt with wartime space, scattered-tip landscape method, and modern psychological weather. After 1949, political conditions favored landscape and Mao-poem pictures; he rarely returned to figures with this freedom. That makes the series a scarce testament to pre-liberation invention and one of the iconic bodies of twentieth-century Chinese painting. Market history follows the same arc: museum inalienability for the 1944 designs; HK$70 million in 2010 and HK$204.85 million in 2017 for the Kong scroll; RMB 82.8 million in 2011 and RMB 103.5 million in 2018 for the large poem-intent scroll; and a reported HK$410 million hammer in 2025 for the CITIC canvas. The prices record scarcity and desire. The pictures themselves record a wartime painter who had learned, from Bai and from Japan and from Sichuan fog, how to make a night listen.
HK$410 million is the hammer price (落槌价), before buyer’s premium. Sale reports use 落槌, not 成交价含佣.
CITIC International’s published buyer’s commission (from the house FAQ) is a flat rate on the whole hammer, by band:
Premium: HK$49,200,000
Price including premium: HK$459,200,000
Hong Kong lots are usually invoiced without VAT on the premium. Shipping, insurance, and any later import tax are extra.
A caveat: some third-party calendars list other 2025 CITIC Hong Kong sessions at a blanket 15% or 18%. If that spring sale used a session rate instead of the FAQ bands, the invoice would be:
CITIC International’s published buyer’s commission (from the house FAQ) is a flat rate on the whole hammer, by band:
- hammer ≤ HK$1 million: 21%
- HK$1 million to under HK$5 million: 18%
- HK$5 million to HK$10 million: 15%
- hammer above HK$10 million: 12%
Premium: HK$49,200,000
Price including premium: HK$459,200,000
Hong Kong lots are usually invoiced without VAT on the premium. Shipping, insurance, and any later import tax are extra.
A caveat: some third-party calendars list other 2025 CITIC Hong Kong sessions at a blanket 15% or 18%. If that spring sale used a session rate instead of the FAQ bands, the invoice would be:
- at 15%: HK$471,500,000
- at 18%: HK$483,800,000
1981 Horseback Wrestling by Huang Zhou
2013 SOLD for RMB 130M by Poly
Huang Zhou liked to express vitality and enthusiasm in his animal studies. Banished during the Cultural Revolution, he actively contributed to the artistic reconstruction and prepared works for diplomatic receptions.
A group of riders in an open field, including in the foreground a woman taming a prancing horse, 205 x 140 cm painted in 1972, was sold for RMB 60M by China Guardian on May 22, 2011, lot 1176.
In 1979, on an official visit to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, he was fascinated by traditional customs. In the meadow, at an altitude of 3000 m, the Kirghiz wrestle on horseback between two teams which are distinguished from each other by the color of the embroidery. This sport is also played by women.
The artist is sick. In 1981, with a delay of two years due to a general paralysis, he paints in ink and colors two works on the theme of Kirghiz wrestling, under the title Jubilant Grassland. One of them is hung in the guesthouse for foreign heads of state.
The other, 142 x 360 cm, was used in 1984 as a diplomatic gift for Armand Hammer. The artist had used vegetable pigments and mineral repaints are done to improve stability before the artwork is presented to the "red magnate" visiting Beijing.
Jubilant Grassland, arguably the artist's masterpiece, features two women's teams, for a total of 7 riders, 9 sheepdogs and 80 horses including a large unsaddled group in middle ground. This artwork was sold for RMB 130M by Poly in cooperation with the Huang Zhou Art Foundation on December 2, 2013, lot 1921. It is illustrated in the post sale report by ChinaDaily.
A group of riders in an open field, including in the foreground a woman taming a prancing horse, 205 x 140 cm painted in 1972, was sold for RMB 60M by China Guardian on May 22, 2011, lot 1176.
In 1979, on an official visit to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, he was fascinated by traditional customs. In the meadow, at an altitude of 3000 m, the Kirghiz wrestle on horseback between two teams which are distinguished from each other by the color of the embroidery. This sport is also played by women.
The artist is sick. In 1981, with a delay of two years due to a general paralysis, he paints in ink and colors two works on the theme of Kirghiz wrestling, under the title Jubilant Grassland. One of them is hung in the guesthouse for foreign heads of state.
The other, 142 x 360 cm, was used in 1984 as a diplomatic gift for Armand Hammer. The artist had used vegetable pigments and mineral repaints are done to improve stability before the artwork is presented to the "red magnate" visiting Beijing.
Jubilant Grassland, arguably the artist's masterpiece, features two women's teams, for a total of 7 riders, 9 sheepdogs and 80 horses including a large unsaddled group in middle ground. This artwork was sold for RMB 130M by Poly in cooperation with the Huang Zhou Art Foundation on December 2, 2013, lot 1921. It is illustrated in the post sale report by ChinaDaily.
