HONG KONG.- The international auction house Bonhams announces that it has secured one of America’s premier private collections of Modern Chinese paintings for sale. Comprising over 280 works in total, The Reverend Richard Fabian Collection of Chinese Paintings spans from the Kangxi and Qianlong period to the 1980’s, encompassing every major school with examples by such masters as Ren Yi, Xugu, Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, Xu Beihong, Zhang Daqian, Fu Baoshi, and Li Keran, among others. A select group of 38 works will debut at Bonhams Hong Kong on 9 October.

The Collector, Reverend Richard Fabian – Founder and rector of San Francisco's ecumenical St. Gregory Nyssen Episcopal Church – first discovered the compelling beauty of Chinese paintings while majoring in Chinese art at Yale University in the 1960s. From then he started building ‘The Fabian Collection’, pursuing works by the eminent painters of the 19th and 20th century. Over three decades, Fabian formed a panoramic collection that spans the 200-year development of Chinese paintings across different schools, including Orthodox (正統派), Jingjiang (京江畫派), Wu(吳門), Lingnan (嶺南), Shanghai (海派) and Jing-jin (京津).

While these two centuries represent a period of great political turbulence and social upheaval in Chinese history, this collection reflects the dynamic creative response of artists to the turmoil imposed by the world around them. Whereas some artists, such as Wu Changshuo, Wu Dacheng and Qi Baishi, sought inspiration to transform classical paintings by examining early traces of calligraphy before 3rd century BC, other artists, such as Gao Jianfu, Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu and Fu Baoshi, travelled to Europe and Japan for the study of non-Chinese art, acquiring new methods and techniques, while retaining the essence of traditional Chinese ink and brushwork in their art.

‘The Fabian Collection’ offers an in-depth exploration of numerous regional schools of the period, as well as an overview of the nationwide aesthetic movements of the last two centuries.

Iris Miao, Bonhams’ Consulting Head of Chinese Paintings, commented: “We are proud to be entrusted with this significant single-owner collection, which represents not only quality and artistic merits for each individual work, but also academic importance when appreciated as a whole. It is a rare occasion that a collection this well-exhibited and well-documented comes fresh to the market, and we are excited to introduce a choice selection of it to our local and overseas collectors in October.”

The Reverend Richard Fabian Collection of Chinese Paintings has been featured across important museums and institutions in the America, including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (2000), the Honolulu Academy of Art (2007) and the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts (2010), with catalogues for both the San Francisco and Honolulu exhibitions.

Proceedings of the three-day 2007 Honolulu scholarly symposium in English and Chinese will be published by Bonhams, and available with the single-owner sale catalogue. These proceedings feature papers by distinguished speakers from the Palace Museum Beijing, the Shanghai Museum, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, The Palace Museum, Taipei, as well as renowned scholars from universities in Japan and the United States.

The regular Fine Chinese Paintings Sale, also being held on 9 October, will offer over 200 lots of classical and modern works alongside a number of important private collections, including: ‘Fine Modern and Contemporary Paintings Previously in Dr. Stephen Yih’s Collection’, ‘Classical and Modern Paintings Previously in the Collection of Mr. Au Yiu Cheuk (1908-2002)’, ‘Modern Paintings Previously in the Collection of an European Diplomat’, and ‘Modern Paintings Previously in the Collection of Tsi Ku Chai Hong Kong’. Building upon the success from the previous season, Bonhams will once again present an online sale with a focus on Southeast Asian private collections, featuring works collected during 1980s and 1990s.