Lot 1403: NG PO WAN

NG PO WAN
(1905-2001)
A Fishing Village
signed in Chinese; dated '8/1967' (lower right)
oil on canvas
66 x 81.5 cm. (26 x 32 in.)
Painted in 1967

Cantra Limited, Ng Po Wan: The Man & His Art, Toronto, Canada, 2001 (illustrated, plate 747, p. 289).

Ng Powan was an artist of intense creativity whose stylistic development took several interesting turns during his long career. While his early works focused on the realist styles of Corot and Rembrandt, he gradually abandoned his classical palette and the earlier Rembrandt-like chiaroscuro effects in favor of layering soft colors, while tending toward the use of brighter, more cheerful tones in the later decades. This transition is visible in A Fishing Village (Lot 1403) where a few black lines suggestive of Chinese calligraphy can be distinguished in the tree tops and boats. Creating texture in the ocean and sky with a palette knife and hard-bristled brush, Ng Powan additionally uses compositional elements borrowed from traditional Chinese landscapes to produce an extra sense of breadth and depth and allow viewers to easily take in the whole scene.

Focusing on his brushwork, Ng formulated unique landscapes, using a wide and aerial perspective of Chinese traditions with Western landscape views as seen in ountry Scene (Lot 1405). The bright shades of green and blue though distinctly taken from oil painting, is balanced with the distinctive black tiled roofs and white walled houses of China. Late Autumn (Lot 1404), painted in 1985 shows a gentler palette of browns and orange hues beautifully reflecting the warm rays of the sun at dusk. It is in all of these works that embody the fresh clarity and detached viewpoint of the ancient Chinese literati painters; Ng's brushwork is concise, flexible, and imbued with feeling, and his gorgeous and carefully managed colors evoke warmth and comfort to the viewer.