BEIJING – A nearly 1,000-year-old ink painting by one of China’s greatestliterati masters Su Shi fetched US$59.5 million (HK$463,600,000) atauction, Christie’s said Monday.
The auction house has described the Song Dynasty artwork created by Su as”one of the world’s rarest Chinese paintings”.
Entitled “Wood and Rock”, the ink-on-paper handscroll depicts a dragon-likeold tree with withered branches and a sharp rock resting at its root.
The painting was the most expensive item ever sold in Christie’s Asia, itsaid.
Su Shi, also known as Su Dongpo, is one of the most important culturalfigures in Chinese history and was an esteemed scholar, poet, prose-writer,painter, calligrapher and statesman.
The 185.5cm-long scroll is inscribed with calligraphy and the poems of fourimportant literati of the 11th century in China, and also exhibits theseals of 41 collectors.
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“The number of the works securely attributed to him are very few, probablyonly two or three. They are extremely rare,” Jonathan Stone, deputychairman for Christie’s Asian art department, said in an earlier preview.
In 2010, “Dizhuming”, a Chinese calligraphy scroll by Huang Tingjian — SuShi’s student — sold for $64 million at Poly Auction in Beijing.
Hong Kong’s auction houses have seen frenzied bidding among Asian buyers inrecent years, with sales of diamonds, paintings and ancient ceramicsshattering world records.
A 10-metre-long triptych entitled “Juin-Octobre 1985” by Zao Wou-Ki — oneof the 20th century’s most prominent Chinese painters — fetched $65million (HK$510 million) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in September.
