Zhang Daqian
Zhāng Dáqiān was a prominent Chinese painter, collector, and forger, often called the greatest Chinese art-forger of the 20th century. In addition to selling museums authentic historical works he collected, and genuinely new works he painted and sold as original Zhang Daqian works, Zhang also sold museums numerous forgeries. These included forgeries claiming to date as far back as the Tang Dynasty, which entered the collections of elite museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Life & Career
Zhang was born in Neijiang, Sichuan province, and was first taught to paint by his mother. The Qing Dynasty collapsed when he was 12, and in the tumultuous political changes which followed, his brother, Zhang Shanzi, who supported Yuan Shikai, was forced to flee to Japan. Zhang Daqian then visited his brother several times in Kyoto in 1917-1919, where he also studied Japanese traditional dyeing and other textile arts. Returning to China, Zhang was briefly a Buddhist novice, and then at age 21 moved to Shanghai, where he began formally studying painting under two prominent Shanghai artists. In accordance with traditional Chinese painting training methods, he practiced chiefly through a combination of close copying, and looser imitation, of existent masterpieces. By age 23, in 1922, he had already, perhaps, successfully forged works by Shitao (1642-1707), one of the most celebrated artists of the early Qing Dynasty; even Huang Binhong (1865-1955), the greatest Chinese art connoisseur of his time, was fooled, or at least confused, by Zhang's work, and is said to have been quite annoyed.
Zhang exhibited at a Sino-Japanese exhibit in Tokyo in 1931, and for much of the remainder of the 1930s-40s, became so famous that the contemporary art world in China was often summarized as "Pu in the north, Zhang in the south," referring to Pu Xinyu.
References
- "Zhang Daqian," Asian Art Newspaper, 9 April 2012.
