Christie's Spring Sales Preview Exhibitions

Christie's Spring Sales Preview Exhibitions Fri to May 30

Collectors whose interest in 20th-century Chinese artists has started to wane with the over-saturation of Qi Baishi, Wu Guangzhong and other modern masters, will perk up when they discover a charming, colour ink-and-brush painting by cartoonist and artist Huang Yao which is coming under the hammer on May 29 at Christie's fine Chinese modern paintings sales.

Huang's refreshing 1980 painting, Lan Ke Shan Tu (Immortal Chess Players), which Christie's Hong Kong lists as Child Play, perfectly represents this multi-talented artist who has long been overlooked.

Displaying Huang's erudition and scholarship about traditional Chinese tales, this ink painting tells the story of a woodcutter in the Jin dynasty who came upon two children playing chess. He stood there watching them and found, before the game ended, that the handle (ke) of his axe had decayed (lan). He hurried home only to find that no one recognised him and those he had known had all passed away. Indeed, he had encountered two immortals playing chess.

In the painting Huang wrote - in his characteristic style of upside-down calligraphy, known as chuyun shu - a poem about a lifetime in the worldly sphere being but the duration of a chess game in the immortal realm. Christie's estimate for this ink-and- brush work on paper is HK$150,000-HK$200,000.

The artist was born in 1914 in Shanghai, and educated in the Chinese classics, literature, studies of folklore, calligraphy and painting, according to Christie's. In 1934, Huang was working at the Shanghai News as a senior journalist after being hired by the newspaper at age 17.