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I would be grateful for any information about this scroll painting belonging to a friend.
It is about 90cm high and the total height of the scroll perhaps 1.7 metres.
Does the inscription tell us anything significant?
Possible approximate date? etc>
Many thanks in advance,
Phillip Adams

Hi Phillip,

Here is the translation of the text.
From top to bottom:

1st 4 letters = May Flowers and Cranes together in Spring

In the second sentence there is
1- name of the year:
WU Shen year (1968 or 1908,1848, etc...)
2- the place the painting was made. (I can't read one of the letter, sorry)
3- name of the artist/painter:
WANG ZHONG LI

Hoping this will help a little
Have a nice day,
Pierre

Thank you Pierre,
Could you suggest which cyclical date would be the most likely?
If better images are required I can take them. These are digital pics taken from shiny prints.
Phillip

Hi Philip,

I would suggest the year 1608 !

There was a quite famous artist from Suzhou, of the same name, famous for his birds and flowers paintings, and very actif around the year 1600's
I have not been able to find a lot of information about him, not even his birthday etc...

For reference, one of his painting was for sale 2 years ago by a Chinese auction house with a reserve price of around 4.000 US$

I found one of WANG ZHONG LI seal used on one of his painting. (See photo)
It looks similar to the one used on your painting.

The writting on your painting does not look like the one of his that I've seen. But hey, I'm not at all a specialist in these kind of art so don't take my word for it.

Last info: the place the painting was made could be CHANG XIN (Zhe Jiang province)but I'm not very sure.

Have a good week end,
Pierre.

WANG ZHONG LI is a Ming painter, but from what I see see in the blurry pictures the painting is in a late 19th -turn of century style. The calligraphy looks amateur in my opinion. It is likely from 1900's or later.

I didn't want to comment at first but pierrevdw is claiming this to be the real thing...

This is a tourist piece. Make believe Wang Zhong Li painted on tea soaked paper. You can clearly see the stains...

Wang Zhong Li is a definitive artist in the Wu style of painting. To attribute this painting to him will probably cause him to turn in is grave.

Here's a comparison of his work.

Hallo,

Hang on my friend, where did I claim this painting is authentic???

I purposely remain neutral about it, giving only information I could find and translated the text.

I'm not qualify to give an opinion as far as authenticity is concerned.

For what I can see, only the seal is similar to the one used by Wong Li on one of his paintings.
The callygraphy, as I mentioned, does not look like Wong's.

Thank you Pierre and kk.
I will try to get some better digital images as soon as possible and post them.
Phillip

Thank you everyone for your input.
Unfortunately my friend who is a deler in European Art has sold the scrollfor A$600; so I am unable to post the better images I had hoped.
Phillip

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