PROVENANCE:

Galerie Arlette Gimaray, Paris

On a flight to Geneva in 1985, Chu was deeply impressed by the sight of the Alps: the snow-covered mountain peaks, the hovering clouds and milky mists, the sheer whiteness of the entire landscape. White fog, white snow, white frost - all white, but all representing very distinct, individual shades, full of variety and subtle transitions. The scenery below him struck a chord within Chu's artistic soul, bringing to his mind the imagery of Tang poetry. On his return trip by train, he encountered a spectacular Alpine blizzard, and this became the inspiration and starting point for his phenomenal Snow Scenes Series. The great Tang poet Li Po wrote the line "In the bitter cold, the snow keeps falling like a giant hand smothering the snowcovered ground" to describe the stirring sight of heavy snowfall. Tu Fu, another famous Tang poet, declaimed, "Under the low lying clouds, the snowflakes dance merrily in the wind". While it is certainly true that one can find numerous phrases and lines in classical Chinese poetry that vividly convey the beauty of snowscapes, the focus of classical Chinese painting - as revealed in a number of renowned winter paintings - is generally on portraying the tranquil magnificence of nature after a bout of snowfall. But what touched Chu Teh-chun's heart was not this kind of quiet serenity; it was the blustering, howling, constantly metamorphosing splendor of wildly flying snowflakes tossed about by the storm. As his painter friend Wu Guanzhong once pointed out, "Movement is a very important element in Chu Teh-chun's compositions. Each of his paintings is a symphony of harmonic motions. Or rather, he manages to channel even the roughest and most violent force into a calm sort of beauty that soothes rather than excites." Chu himself admits that he likes to listen to classical music while he paints, and that the rhythm and melodies of the music are imperceptibly transferred onto the canvas as undulating lines and shades of color.

Chu is a great admirer of Tang and Song poetry, and his favorite diversions are reading in The Complete Tang Shi or The Collected Song Ci, as well as writing calligraphy and painting in the classical style. The fresh vigor of the Tang Dynasty and the refined elegance of the Song Dynasty mark two distinct highpoints in the history of Chinese art. In Chu's view the greatness of Tang and Song art derives largely from the fact that in those days, painters were in direct contact with nature, and that all their art was born out of this immediate experience of the natural environment. Interestingly, the evident importance of natural subjects in Tang and Song shanshui painting finds an echo in the development of modern Western painting, with some schools placing an increasing emphasis on carefully observing nature before proceeding to evolve distinct techniques, concepts and methods of expression. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the French poet and art critic Jean-François Chabrun once described Chu Teh-chun as a "Twentieth Century Song Painter" (Peintre Song du XXe siècle), highlighting the fact that Chu, while firmly rooted in the classical Chinese tradition, is also very much at home in the modern art movement with its special focus on individual creativity and originality.

Chu's concept of painting was deeply influenced by the art of the three Song painters Fan Kuan, Kuo Hsi and Li Tang, but even before he came to admire and learn from their work, he had already been inspired by modern Western masters such as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955) to find his own way in the world of painting. These diverse stimulations soon led him to reappraise the spirit of traditional Chinese ink and wash painting and calligraphy, and gain a renewed understanding of the classical Chinese concept that "painting and calligraphy originate from the same source". Quite unexpectedly, it turned out that the training he had received in these disciplines as a young man stood him in good stead in developing his skills as a modern painter. Another source of inspiration for Chu were the Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn's (1606-1669) delicate treatment of light and dark, a fact that is very evident in the dramatic play of light, and the fluctuating light sources, that can be witnessed in Chu's emotionally expressive abstract paintings. The mature Chu adroitly applies modern painting techniques to classical Chinese themes and motifs, thus creating a unique blend of Western and Eastern artistic qualities. As Chu Ko put it, "Chu is a master who has used oil painting to express the spirit of Chinese ink-wash painting...Chu Tehchun not only uses oil paint but also uses the line, depth of shading, and color effects in space in order to better express the flavor of ink-wash painting. One cannot but admire such achievement." (Chu Ko, 'Flourishing Billows of Clouds – An Examination of the Significance of Chu Teh-chun's Art', Chu Tehchun, King Ling Art Center, Taipei, August 1989, p. 9 & p. 11)

For a painter like Chu, who fuses the spirit of traditional Chinese culture with modern oil painting, it is particularly important to heed the ancient advice for painters that "one learns from nature, but creates from the heart". In his early years in Hangzhou, Chu came under the influence of Lin Fengmian and other leaders of the New Wave Art Movement, and during this period he experimented widely with both ink and wash and oil painting. Already in these early student works his talent became quickly apparent. Always eager to further hone his skills, Chu would frequently invite Wu Guanzhong for trips to the environs where they would sketch and paint from life. After coming to Taiwan, Chu loved to take his students to quiet spots of scenic beauty, and quite a few sketches of exquisite mountain vistas resulted from these excursions as proof of Chu's fascination with, and passion for, beautiful natural scenery. Chu once told the art critic Joseph Paul Schneider (1940-1998) , "Nature wi l l forever remain my mother." Schneider, when contemplating Chu's later work (after the mid-1980s), notes how Chu's inspiration is ever more closely derived from nature: "...From the mineralogical structures of the deep earth awakened by the power of light in some of his works, some recent paintings suggesting the 'Presence of Winter', then through tempest and chaos, or through works inspired by 'peaceful morning hours' or the colors of autumn, to the exploration of that fire smouldering amid his 'inhabited structures', from the level of the horizon to the ascending lines, the nourishing light is present everywhere, concentrated or diffuse. Born of melting matter, flashing from a single focus or subtly dispersed among the outlines, light ignores all boundaries. It is that fire which builds up the world and counteracts the power of darkness; it is the victorious weapon in a mysterious and pathetic dialogue...." (Joseph Paul Schneider, translated by Helene Joussein from Du Donnerstag, April 2, 1987, Luxembourg)

Chu Teh-chun's representative snowscape oil paintings were all completed in 1987, including "La forêt blanche", "Temps d'hiver" and "Présence hivernale". It was one of Chu's most prolific years during which he produced many almost exclusively large format paintings. He also had several exhibitions, such as a solo exhibition at the Taipei National Museum of History (a grand retrospective on his work since he left Taiwan 32 years earlier) and three touring exhibits organized by ar t gal ler ies . Al so i n 1987, he was invited to participate in the "Panorama de l'Ecole Française Contemporaine", a show organized by the French Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel, where his work went on display next to that of other important French modern artists. So if we ask why this was a particularly fruitful period in Chu's life, one obvious answer is that his output satisfied an unprecedented demand for his paintings, reflected by the many joint and solo exhibitions mentioned above. But there was another, more important if less obvious reason for this sudden spurt of creativity: a year earlier, in 1986, Chu had been back to Taiwan to take part in an art symposium, an event that provided him with the opportunity to see in the original a number of pieces by Song Dynasty shanshui painters. These were the very masters he had long admired, and he had asked his student Sung Lung-fei to arrange a private viewing of three of the most treasured paintings of the entire National Palace Museum collection. With the special permission of the then director of the Palace Museum, Chin Hsiao-yi, and accompanied by his old classmate from Hangzhou, Li Lin-tsan, he took in all the beauty and the style of Fan Kuan's "Travelers Among Mountains and Streams", Kuo Hsi's "Early Spring", and Li Tang's "Wind in Pines Among a Myriad Valleys", each of them an undisputed classic.

Being able to have a firsthand look at these superb masterpieces meant a lot to Chu Teh-chun, and it had a significant impact on his subsequent creative work. Nothing can replace a close inspection of the originals if one wishes to scrutinize the finer points of brushwork and composition. It is therefore hardly an exaggeration to say that his private viewing of Song landscape paintings was one of the driving forces behind the Snow Scenes Series, and probably the main reason why in these works Chu once more reached the peak of his creative abilities. This lot, "Nature hivernale", is one of his few snowscape paintings in the upright format. It has some of the graceful elegance of Song paintings, unlike the majority of pieces in the Snow Scenes Series, which are in a horizontal format and have a much starker and more self-assertive quality. Nature hivernale's rather understated, refined quality is very reminiscent of the ethereal imagery found in many Song literati paintings. For this piece, Chu employed an impromptu approach, with his brush following wherever inspiration might lead it. The dark blue lines and patterns, executed in unrestrained, "flying" brushstrokes, and the sprinkles of white snowflakes dabbed across the composition, are all typical for Chu's trademark style, natural and smooth "like moving clouds and flowing water". Meanwhile, the picture breathes a freedom of spirit through which we may well discern the atmosphere of winter in Europe. Yet this is also where Chu adds his own ingenious touch, for he subtly brightens the often dark and harsh mood of a lonely winter landscape in northern regions with small dabs of yellow and red, thus adding a more vigorous flair to the predominantly white and blue palette. Tang poet Cen Shen wrote, "It is as if suddenly one night a spring wind would rise, and scatter the blossoms from thousands and thousands of pear trees", using a springtime image as a metaphor for the beauty of the earth covered under a thick layer of snow. In "Nature hivernale", Chu does something very similar when he employs unique shades of color and gently undulating lines to create a litheness and rhythmic harmony that make the observer acutely aware of the stunning beauty that is a winter landscape.