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Chinese Famous Oil Painting Auctioned Off Via Internet
A famous oil painting by a Chinese painter was auctioned off Sunday at a price of 2.5 million yuan (about US$301,000) after half a month of public bidding via the Internet.
An anonymous Taiwanese bought the painting. The painting was previously owned by a collector who purchased the painting at 1.9 million yuan (about US$229,000) at a Sotheby's auction last year. The owner who was identified Xiao entrusted Guardian Auction Online last October to sell the masterpiece through the Internet during the Shanghai Arts Fair this November.
The painting, the Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains, was drawn by Xu Beihong (1895-1953), a prestigious painter of modern China, in India in 1940, when he was a guest professor at a local university at the invitation of Tagore (1861-1941). Xu was inspired by the unfaltering spirit of Saint Gandhi (1869-1948), fighting for India's decolonization for a lifetime, when he met the great man through the introduction of Tagore.
Xu finished the painting after he went back to Singapore where he resided as a visitor. The Pacific War broke out soon after and Japanese intruders approached the city. Xu and his friends hid paintings collected and drawn by himself, including this one, in a well at a local school.
In 1949, four years after Japan's surrender, Xu sent for the paintings and gave the painting to the school principal as gratitude. The painting did not return to China for more than half a century.
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