WU GUANZHONG (attributed to, 1919 – 2010). Waves. Oil and gouache on board, signed tu to bottom right, unframed, 21.9 x 26cm. Provenance: from an Important Western private collection, acquired from Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, New York, circa 2000, by repute, thence by decent to the present owner. 吳冠中《浪》 油彩水粉木板畫 右下角簽筆名「荼」 來源：西方重要私人收藏，大約於2000年購於紐約Robert Hatfield Ellsworth處（口述），後傳承至現藏家。 Another work with a similar subject from the collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this work depicts the summer resort of Beidaihe: A rainstorm sweeps down on the northern land, White breakers leap to the sky. No fishing boats off Qinhuangdao Are seen on the boundless ocean. Where are they gone? Nearly two thousand years ago Wielding his whip, the Emperor Weiwu Rode eastward to Jieshi; his poem survives. Today the autumn wind still sighs, But the world has changed! Wu Guanzhong studied oil painting under Lin Fengmian (1900–1991) at the Hangzhou Academy of Art where he enrolled in 1936. Between 1947 to 1950 he moved to Paris, immersing himself in the works of Cézanne, Gauguin, and Matisse before returning to China as a lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Wu was the first living Chinese artist to be granted a solo exhibition at the British Museum in 1992: Wu Guanzhong – A 20th-Century Chinese Painter. As one of the founders of modern Chinese painting Wu merged Chinese ink painting traditions with Western abstraction, and in this work we see representational form pushed to the limits of abstraction. Here calligraphic lines in opaque white give structure to the swirling colours and adding a basis of Chinese artist tradition to the vibrant and dynamic composition.