Christie’s Hong Kong Seeks to Seize a $33 Million Record for Chinese-French Modernist Sanyu

Christie’s is looking to make history in Hong Kong next month.
The house hopes to recalibrate the market for the late
Chinese-French modernist Sanyu at its evening sale of 20th century
and contemporary works on November 23. Headlining the auction will
be Sanyu’s bravura oil on masonite Five Nudes (ca. 1955), the artist’s largest-ever painting
of the feminine form, with a low estimate of HK $250 million (US
$33 million).

Assuming bidding reaches the
work’s low estimate (and likely even just the reserve price),
Christie’s will demolish Sanyu’s current world auction record of HK
$198 million (US $25.2 million). (All sales figures include buyer’s
premium and are not adjusted for inflation.) That record was set
just last week by the sale of Nu (1960s), a striking painting of a single
reclining female nude against a white background, at Sotheby’s Hong
Kong. 

If Christie’s finds success next
month, Five
Nudes will become triply
noteworthy in auction history. The same work was responsible for
setting one of Sanyu’s previous world auction records, when it sold
for HK $128 million (US $16.5 million) in 2011 at the Taipei-based
auction house Ravenel—and, at the time, also established a new high
mark for any oil painting by a Chinese artist, according to
Christie’s. 

Born in China in 1901, Sanyu
moved to Paris at age 20 and remained there until his death in
1966. The saturated colors and bold line work of his oeuvre have
inspired some to refer to him as the “Chinese Matisse.” Although he
married a minor aristocrat and circulated through the social scene
in the City of Light, he primarily survived thanks to the largesse
of his brother Chang Junmin, nicknamed the “Millionaire of
Nanchong,” who managed the family’s lucrative silk-weaving
business. Sanyu regularly rejected inquiries from collectors and
art dealers during his lifetime. His rise to prominence began only
after Taiwanese dealers encountered his work after the 1988
China-Paris exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Since 2009, Sanyu’s works have
generated at least $22 million per year at auction worldwide,
according to the artnet Price Database. His highest annual total
came in 2017, when 120 works sold under the hammer for nearly $60
million total. However, 2019
will land above that figure if Five Nudes finds a buyer,
as Sanyu has already accumulated more than $41 million in
auction sales from January through mid-October. All the more reason
market-watchers should look East come November 23.

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