In an auction at Sotheby’s Hong Kong Spring Sale that lasted 50 minutes, with more than 100 bids, Zhang Daqian’s late work Peach Blossom Spring (1982) sold for $34.7 million (USD) to Long Museum, Shanghai. The splashed-ink-and-colour painting far exceeded its original estimate of $8.3 million, setting a world record for the artist (whose previous record was set when Lotus and Mandarin Ducks, 1947, sold for $24.5 million in 2011). Guohua painter Zhang Daqian, who was regarded as a modern impressionist and expressionist painter by the 1960s, died in 1983.
5 April 2016.
