Sotheby’s Spotlight: Rishika Assomull and Michelle Yaw on Female Artists

F ollowing the spectacular success of Georgette Chen’s Boats and shophouses (circa 1963-1965) at Sotheby’s Singapore’s landmark auction last year, which set the auction record for the artist at the time, Sotheby’s is thrilled to offer Lychees and Peaches (Lot 15) as a highlight of this year’s auction in Singapore. Meticulously executed, resplendent in colour and imbued with a distinct sense of movement, Lychees and Peaches is a superlative example of Chen’s still life paintings that have made her one of the most sought-after female artists in Asia. Significantly, only seven examples of Chen’s 1940s paintings, completed while the artist was in China, have surfaced at auction, and overall, her still life paintings have proved the most coveted, with the two auction records for the artist depicting various types of fruit. Lychees and Peaches is thus an extraordinary, rare example by Georgette Chen to come to the market, emblematic of Chen’s bold and rhythmic approach to image-making.

Lychees and Peaches was executed during a significant period in the artist’s life, when Chen was residing in Shanghai between 1942 and 1947. As a consequence of the Sino-Japanese War, in 1941, Chen and her first husband Eugene Chen Youren (1878-1944) were arrested in Hong Kong and moved to Shanghai in 1942, where they were forced to remain under house arrest due to Eugene’s refusal to collaborate with the occupying Japanese forces. Living under surveillance, Chen became occupied with painting the objects found in her surroundings that reflected her daily life. During this time, however, Chen was able to hold two solo exhibitions in Shanghai at the Metropole Hotel (1943) and the Alliance Française (1947), testament to her resolute commitment to her painting practice. After Eugene Chen's passing in 1944, Chen remained in Shanghai to paint. After the war she embarked on a painting trip throughout different parts of China, culminating in Chen's 1949 solo exhibition at the Asia Institute of New York, featuring 85 works completed while Chen resided in China.

Chen’s still life paintings are often saturated with symbolic significance, and indeed Lychees and Peaches is no exception. For example, the peaches can be considered as ancient Chinese symbols of longevity and fertility, which Chen places here alongside red, heart-shaped lychee, which has been used as a symbol of love since the 8th century when the Emperor Li Longji infamously had the fruit delivered day and night to his favourite concubine at great expense.

As exemplified by the present work, Chen’s use of perspective can be compared to that of Paul Cezanne’s, the French post-Impressionist, with the simultaneous deployment of multiple perspectives within a piece. Chen uses multiple perspectives within a single composition to represent a true experience of sight, allowing the scene to come alive before our eyes. Indeed, the lychees almost tumble off the table, from the picture plane and into the viewer’s space, creating an extraordinary sense of vitality and dynamism in the painting. Further recalling the European still life masters, like Matisse, Chen’s brushstrokes are bold, broad and bright, but they are also defined, deliberate and controlled. Further, the relationship between colour, brushstroke and form is a constant theme throughout Chen’s oeuvre: they exist to inform each other in an inextricable, contingent web. Like Cézanne and many post-Impressionists, she outlined her objects in a complementary or contrasting colour, creating a deep tension between definition of form and instability of colour. In the words of Cézanne, “The outline and the colours are no longer distinct from each other. As you paint, you outline; the more the colours harmonize, the more the outline becomes precise... When the colour is at its richest, the form has reached plenitude” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, Evanston, USA 1992, p. 15).

Today, Chen’s works can be found in the permanent collections of prominent institutions around the world, including the Long Museum, Shanghai; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Testament to her importance in Singapore’s art history, Chen received Singapore’s Cultural Medallion in 1982, and in 2020, the national Gallery Singapore staged Georgette Chen: At Home In The World, the first major museum retrospective of the artist in more than two decades, focusing on her lasting legacy in the development of Singapore’s artistic landscape.

Georgette Chen’s Still Lifes and the Poetry of Everyday Life

繼《小船和店屋》（約 1963 至 1965 年）去年在新加坡蘇富比拍賣會上大獲成功、創下當時張荔英的拍賣紀錄後，蘇富比將在今年新加坡拍賣會榮幸呈獻《荔枝和桃子》（約 1940 至 1945 年）（拍品編號15），作為本次拍賣的重磅鉅作。《荔枝和桃子》畫功精湛，色彩繽紛多姿，荔枝和桃子躍然紙上，是張荔英靜物畫中的代表作。值得注意的是，張荔英 1940 年代在中國完成的作品中，只有七幅曾現身拍場。市場對張荔英的靜物畫的需求最為熱熾，其兩幅以水果為主題的作品更創下拍賣紀錄。由此可見，展現張荔英超卓畫技的《荔枝和桃子》，在市場上難得一遇，極為罕見。

《荔枝和桃子》創作於張荔英人生中的重要時期（1942 至 1947 年），當時她在上海居住。1941 年，中日戰爭蔓延至香港，她和首任丈夫陳友仁（1878 至 1944 年）被捕，翌年轉押上海。由於陳友仁拒絕與日軍合作，夫婦二人遭軟禁。不過，日軍的監視無阻張荔英繼續繪畫四周的日常之物，記錄生活點滴；她甚至還找到機會在上海新城飯店（1943 年）和法國文化協會（1947 年）舉辦兩場個展，展現出她對繪畫的堅定和熱愛。1944 年，丈夫逝世，張荔英留在上海繼續作畫。戰爭結束後，她踏上旅途，遊遍大江南北畫畫，並積微成著，1949 年在紐約亞洲協會舉辦的個展中，展出在中國期間完成的 85 幅作品。

張荔英的靜物畫往往充滿象徵意義，而《荔枝和桃子》亦不例外。桃子在中國古代象徵長壽和生育，而旁邊的紅色心形荔枝則因為唐玄宗不惜工本，晝夜為寵妃送荔枝，自公元八世紀以來，成為愛的象徵。

深受法國後印象派保羅·塞尚（Paul Cezanne）影響，張荔英在本作中純熟運用多重透視，以呈現真實的視覺體驗，讓眼前的場景栩栩如生。荔枝看似正要從桌上滾下，自畫面跌落到觀者置身的空間之中，生機盎然之餘又動感十足。一如馬蒂斯（Henri Matisse）等歐洲靜物大師，張荔英下筆大膽、疏朗明快，同時卻又清晰分明、精密嚴謹。另外，色彩、筆觸和形式之間的關係乃是貫穿張荔英作品的永恆主題：三者偶然交織，密不可分。就似塞尚和一眾後印象派畫家，張荔英喜以互補色或對比色勾勒物件輪廓，令形式清晰而色彩流動多變，營造出萬鈞張力。

張荔英的作品獲多地博物館機構永久收藏，例如上海龍美術館、日本福岡亞洲美術館和巴黎龐畢度中心等著名機構。1982 年，張荔英獲頒新加坡文化獎，表揚她為新加坡藝術領域作出的貢獻。2020 年，新加坡國家美術館舉辦了張荔英近二十多年來的首個大型回顧展，名為「此心安處——張荔英藝術展」的展覽聚焦她以畫筆記錄新加坡面貌的作品。