Rêveur

Fu, Baoshi 傅抱石, né en 1904, décédé en 1965

Entre 1940 et 1949
Papier, Encre, Couleurs - Pigments
Peinture
抱石之印; 其命惟新
Don manuel : Guo, Youshou 郭有守, Docteur

M.C. 8663

Inscription and signature: 帝王輕濄眼,宇宙是何郷?新喻傅抱石。

Painter’s seals: 1.  抱石之印 (白文) 2. 其命惟新 (朱文)

Translation: Emperors and Kings have trod lightly before our eyes, where does the universe take place? Fu Baoshi of Xinyu.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              With closed eyes, the man lying in the bottom of the boat lets himself drift on the water. Around him, a hazy landscape takes form with the brushstrokes. In this composition, the painter tries to capture the spirit of the verse by Cheng Sui, which he notes in the margin of the painting. This work is representative of Fu Baoshi’s creative process. He appropriates a poetic cycle, a text or a simple verse, and comes up with a visual interpretation of it, by means of an often lengthy and difficult process, by his own account. In the preface to the exhibition of his work held in Chongqing in 1942, Fu Baoshi mentioned his fondness for these verses by Cheng Sui. In parallel, he also described the difficulties encountered in depicting them; he executing numerous paintings before achieving a work that he deemed “presentable”, if well below the objective he had set himself. The painting in the Cernuschi Museum was probably executed in the last years of the war, in the wake of the work mentioned in the 1942 preface. A number of paintings illustrating this theme were produced in the post-war years. In comparison to these works, also composed around the figure of a dreamer, the Cernuschi Museum painting stands out in its large format, enabling a more suggestive rendering of the space.
 

Reference(s) : Gilles Béguin (dir.), Arts de l’Asie au Musée Cernuschi, Paris : Paris-Musées ; Paris : Findakly, 2000.
Marie-Thérèse Bobot, Musée Cernuschi: collection des peintures et calligraphies chinoises contemporaines, collection du musée Cernuschi, Alençon : Imprimerie alençonnaise, 1985.
René Grousset, La Chine et son art, Paris : Plon, 1951.