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Lot
Number
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G000043 |
| Lot
Title |
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The Ancestral Shrine by Yee Bon |
| Date
of Origin |
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20 Century |
| Country
of Origin |
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China |
| Material
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Oil on Paper |
| Measurements |
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17 x 22.5 cm (6.69 x 8.86 inch) |
| Lot
Quantity |
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1 |
| Estimate |
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| Description:
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Yee Bon
1905.6 - 1995
Born in Guandong Tai Shan Shen.
Yee Bon was one of the most prominent painters in Hong Kong during the 1950s, his works were enormously influential in the early art development of Hong Kong. In 1918, Yee Bon left for Canada and began receiving formal art education at Winnipeg School of Art in 1928. In 1932, Yee Bon transferred to Ontario College of Art to study under Canadian artists J.E.H MacDonald, J.W Beaty and Frank Johnson. In 1932, the works of Yee were widely recognized overseas and he became the first Chinese artist to exhibit in the National Art Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. He returned to his homeland, Guangzhou, and later moved to Hong Kong in 1935, and started a studio in which he worked and taught to promote the development of Western paintings locally.
Hong Kong, a small fishing village in the 1930s to 40s, was a backwater of art and culture. Yee Bon had taken up the challenge, and with an impressive creativity, insist on organizing painting exhibitions almost every year with very limited resources. In 1930s, art scenes in China were rapidly developed in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Coastal cities in the south such as Guangzhou and Hong Kong, meanwhile, formed a strong force in cultivating Chinese oil paintings. Artists such as Yee Bon, Guan Liang, Li Tiefu, Feng Gangbai, Huang Xinbo, Lee Byng, Ng Po Wan, Luis Chan and Bao Shaoyou once all resided in Hong Kong, and contributed to a small, but remarkably vibrant, artistic community.
When Xu Beihong visited his exhibition and studio in 1937, he exclaimed in amazement, "I think oil painting is novel to China, especially in the South. I had no idea that there are two great oil painters in Hong Kong: Li Tiefu and Yee Bon." Yee Bon devoted himself to oil paintings throughout the 60 years of his artistic career. His paintings can be divided in two phases, marked by his return to Guangzhou from Hong Kong in 1956; the first phase, the "Hong Kong period" (1935-1956) and thereafter the "China period". These two respective phases, embracing significant historical value while witnessing Yee Bon s vitality throughout the different periods of his artistic creation.
Yee Bon was the directorate of China Artist Association, art counselor, and the vice president of the Guandong Painting School. Painted large oil paintings for the Guandong, Heilongjiang halls of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. His works has been collected for over 10 pieces by National Art Museum of China, Guandong art academy, Hong Kong Museum of Art; In July 1995, he held a grand solo oil paintings exhibitions, there were over 300 pieces exhibited, next year, he participated the "Yee Bon Exhibition" held by Hong Kong Art Center, where exhibited 80 pieces that received appreciative reviews.
Entering the era of the new China, Yee Bon delved anew into creating works in oil and began searching for style with a modern zeitgeist but also tinged with an eastern flavor. Yee once said, "I have often thought that if the Chinese are going to study Western oil painting, they should add to it something of their own ethnic character, and try harder to understand their own art." Yee Bon himself worked to gain such an understanding, taking up the calligraphy brush to paint in ink on Chinese Xuan paper-not to become a painter of traditional Chinese landscapes, but to begin the journey toward a more native approach in which traditional techniques would be mirrored in the medium of oil. Yee became an acknowledged master of the landscape, a genre which would engage him continuously throughout his career. To his landscapes he brought the same earnestness as he did to life in general, reflecting on subject, composition, and color as deeply as if they were still life or human subject, so that his works in that genre fully reveal his distinct personal style and aesthetic predilections. |
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| Condition
and Additional Specification: |
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Signed: Yee Bon |
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