Chapter 1233 1233. Appreciation (2/5)

Chapter 1233 1233. Appreciation (25)

There are oil paintings in the West and ink paintings in the East.

Because of the economic and national status of the times, Western painting has won over China in terms of cultural invasion, taking the lead in completing the leap from the West to the East.

From the arrival of missionaries to the return of overseas students, hundreds of years of history spanned the period. This period was the stage of vigorous development of oil painting in southern trading ports in the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, oil painters appeared in the South as early as the Qing Dynasty.

Among them, in that earliest era, the most well-known oil painting master was Shi Beilin.

There is not much information about this person on the Internet, so Li Du doesn't know much about him, but as far as Logan Stanley knows, there is still a lot of information about this artist.

"Shi Beilin can almost be said to be the opener of China's Wanqing oil painting market. It is he who allowed this art to enter the folks, making its success linked to money. According to my research yesterday, Shi Beilin needed ten dollars to make a painting at that time .”

Li Du nodded. The ten dollars in the Wanqing era, if calculated according to price inflation, can now be converted into one hundred thousand dollars, no problem.

"Shi Beilin's artistic attainments are very high, and his portrait sketching ability is even more outstanding. His business is very prosperous. Even the mayor of Sailun City took his wife to visit China's treaty ports and asked him to do a portrait."

It is understandable that, as far as the art market is concerned, reputation means business, and business will promote the development of art, the number of lovers will increase, and the number of people who come here will increase.

"But what makes him more powerful is the shaping of his painting style. He formed his own portrait painting style very early on. You see, the contrast between light and dark in these portraits is not strong, but he pays attention to the expression of facial anatomy."

"His paintings have a characteristic. He likes to use brown-gray or blue-gray to express the background. Looking at this painting, have you noticed? The background behind the backlight of the portrait has a halo that is lighter than the dark side of the face..."

When Logan Stanley introduced Spelin, he also helped them identify the authenticity of these portraits.

Listening to his introduction, Hans asked: "These paintings are all real, and they are all made by the prolific Master Spelling, right?"

Logan Stanley laughed and said, "I'm going to introduce this next point. It's hard to tell if it's true or not. It's easy to identify their ages, but it's more difficult to identify whether they all came from Spelin."

"As I said just now, the great thing about Shi Beilin is that he shaped the oil painting style of the trading ports in southern China at that time. From the 1770s, the oil painters there will learn from his style in the next half century."

"They have learned too well and imitated too much, so now most of them are attributed to Shi Beilin or called Shi Beilin's style of painting, so it is not easy to really identify them."

Li Du said: "All my paintings have signatures and dates on the back. Look at this one, the signature is directly on the front. In April 1777, Shi Peilin painted Captain Ralph-Morris on the steamer at the Pearl River Estuary."

Logan Stanley shook his head and said: "This cannot be used as a basis for investigation, but of course it is useful. Analyzing the style and handwriting of the portrait can also play a role."

"Then if it's not sure that it's a painting by Spelin, will the value decrease?" Hans asked with concern.

Logan nodded: "Yes, Stanley's paintings are more valuable, and the painters at that time praised him very much. For example, John Millais said, 'Spelin is an excellent Chinese painter, and perhaps it is this huge empire. The only one in the field'."

He went on to introduce that authenticating Shi Beilin's paintings is more difficult, and requires the consultation of many experts who have studied the oil paintings of that era.

In particular, Shi Beilin's painting style was changeable, which can be roughly divided into two stages around the 1790s.

"His early portraits are related to his glass portraits. The brush used in the picture is relatively rigid, and the brush strokes are very smooth. The effect of the face structure is not obvious. The clothing and background are basically the faded changes of the color depth. Decoration The smell is very strong, the colors lack the unity and harmony of the environmental tones, and the picture is relatively rigid..."

"From about 1786, due to the improvement of painting on canvas and the improvement of skills, subtle color changes began to appear in the clothing, and the tone of the whole picture became soft and unified, and the facial structure and contrast of light and dark of the characters were also shown. The background has also changed in depth, the volume and sense of space of the characters have been strengthened, the demeanor and temperament have been revealed, and the style of the portrait has taken on a neoclassical style..."

"In his later years, his works have got rid of the traces of oriental people's simple use of lines to shape portraits, and have reached a level comparable to those of Western painters, and they are indistinguishable..."

From a professional point of view, Logan introduced a lot of things, and Li Du had a hard time listening to them. He had not received systematic training in oil painting, so he knew little about these things.

Logan couldn't give an accurate appraisal, but from his professional perspective, the reliability of these portraits is still very strong, and it should indeed belong to Shi Beilin.

Because Shi Beilin's portraits were popular in China before, and China has a profound antique culture, so the value is not very high. Logan said that at the auction, Shi Beilin's paintings are worth a million dollars at most.

Li Du was very satisfied with this price, even if the combined price was only one million dollars, he still made a lot of money.

He picked up a big leak this time, Liu Shanyang is very shrewd, but he doesn't know much about the Internet, and he doesn't know how to use the Internet to check the identities of these oil paintings.

Or he looked it up online, but couldn't find out why.

In addition, his vision determines his worth. Liu Shanyang usually wanders in the market, cheating ten or one hundred yuan at a time. It is impossible to imagine that a Chinese oil painting can be sold for several million yuan.

After all, in public perception, all valuable oil paintings are made by Western painters.

Moreover, Liu Shanyang only knew that these paintings were old, but did not know that they had existed for more than two hundred years. In his estimation, these paintings were buried in the ground and hidden in a special period decades ago.

Li Du paid the appraisal fee, Logan signed his name on the oil painting appraisal certificate, and the rest was how to deal with it.

Logan made it very clear that these oil paintings tend to be niche. If they want to sell at a high price, they can only be sold to those who like to collect Chinese oil paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Li Du asked Hans helplessly, "Do you know these people?"

Hans shook his head.

Li Du said: "Then you can contact the auction house to see if any auction house is interested in them, or advertise on places like face-book."

Hans thought for a while and said, "Actually, there are other ways. I have a good solution for you to listen to."