He may not be a household name in Western countries, but over the past few years the Chinese painter Qi Baishi (齐白石, 1864-1957) has quietly emerged as one of the world’s top-selling artists on the strength of his popularity among cashed-up mainland Chinese collectors. As the global financial crisis hit international auction houses in 2009, emergent Chinese collectors pumped millions into works by Qi at domestic Chinese auctions, making his ascent appear even more dramatic, and following two years of strong sales, last year Qi Baishi trailed only Pablo Picasso in ArtPrice’s annual artist sales ranking with US$70 million in sales. This saw Qi, for the first time, surpass list stalwart Andy Warhol, an achievement that was not lost on the international art press.
Now, in the wake of this weekend’s China Guardian spring auctions in Beijing, held this past weekend, Qi is back in the news. On Sunday, Qi’s 1946 ink painting “A Long Life, a Peaceful World” sold for a jaw-dropping 425.5 million yuan (US$65 million), in the process setting a new record for a Chinese painting. The 100 x 266 cm (3 x 8.5 feet) ink wash, originally created as a gift to then-Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, depicts a falcon on a pine branch, flanked on either side by Qi’s masterful calligraphy. The sale of this work, along with another of Qi’s paintings that sold for 92 million yuan (US$14 million) this weekend, helped the China Guardian spring auctions pull in a grand total of 1 billion yuan ($649 million) so far.
As Artinfo points out, on the strength of its ongoing spring auctions, China Guardian looks to reassert dominance in the domestic Chinese auction house over its rival Poly, which edged the former out last year with US$1.5 billion in sales last year. With the priority these auction houses place on traditional Chinese artists (though they are increasingly championing contemporary Chinese artists as well), Artinfo notes that China Guardian and Poly are hoping to tap an increasingly important market:
Over the last couple of years, as Chinese collectors have increasingly made their presence felt in auction rooms around the world, the value of works by modern masters like Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, Zhang Daqian, and Fu Baoshi have skyrocketed. Last year these modern artists, whose work is in the traditional Chinese style, took out four of the top ten spots in Artprice’s global rankings by auction revenue.
The previous record for a Chinese painting at auction was set last year at Beijing’s Hanhai auction house, when Xu Beihong’s “Ba People Fetching Water” (1937) sold for for RMB 171 million ($25.8 million). Qi Baishi’s work now takes third place overall in the record rankings of Chinese works of art at auction. First place is held by the Qianlong vase that sold at Bainbridges in the United Kingdom for $85.9 million last November, with second place going to a calligraphy by Song Dynasty master Huang Tingjian that sold at Poly Auctions in Beijing last June for RMB 436.8 million ($64 million).
