CATALOGUE

Hou-mei Sung, Julia F. Andrews, and Kuiyi Shen

Spring Streams and New Willows

1932 album leaf, ink on paper

33.4 × 24.6 cm

The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University

C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by T.H. Wu 2011.07.357

In this beautifully balanced album leaf, Spring Streams and New Willows, Woo reorganizes Song and Yuan landscape styles into a crescentshaped composition. With a vast expanse of empty space unpopulated by human figures, he captures the loneliness characteristic of the Yuan master Ni Zan 倪瓚 (1301–1374), echoing his poem. Early spring willows receding along the zigzagging lakeshore and a wooden bridge in the foreground create a typical Jiangnan scene. This painting seems to have been made when Woo was traveling to his hometown. Instead of happiness at the arrival of the new season, he expresses loneliness at his separation from loved ones. Although the dry strokes applied here certainly refer to the Yuan masters, the willows may have been inspired by the Song artist Zhao Lingrang 趙令穰 (active late 11th–early 12th century; see cat. 2) and horizontal dots on the distant peaks evoke the brushwork of Mi Fu 米芾 (1051–1107). A seal in the lower right corner directly adopts a phrase from the much-admired calligraphic work Lantingji xu 蘭亭集序 (Preface to the Orchid Pavilion collection) written by Wang Xizhi 王羲之 in 353.

JA KS

Clearing after Spring Rain

1932 album leaf, ink on paper

33.5 × 24.1 cm

The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University

C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by T.H. Wu 2015.02.10

This is a leaf from the same album as Spring Streams and New Willows (cat. 3). In Clearing after Spring Rain, Woo imagines the constricted sensation of a cottage at the bottom of a deep mountain valley. The blank paper behind the rustic dwelling, however, releases the pressure as the mist filters through the receding gorge. Woo writes that he paints to disperse the gloomy feelings caused by the rainy season. The composition would be recognized as a reference to the Yuan artist Huang Gongwang 黃公望 (1269–1354), but the emphasis on dry ink and the variety of texture strokes for the trees is synthesized from many other early masters. This variation in composition and brushwork from one leaf to the next adds visual and expressive interest to the album. Woo envisions a scene that is compelling in its own right, but he paints in a style that can also be appreciated by viewers who seek classical traces. By this time, Woo Chong Yung had reached his own mature style of literati landscape.

JA KS

Portrait of a Lady

1951 hanging scroll, ink and color on paper 45.3 × 31 cm

The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University

C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by Lois D. Augur

90.37

A surreal image, Portrait of a Lady depicts a beautiful lady floating amidst blossoming plums, expressing Woo’s deep love and desire for his absent wife, from whom he was separated after the Communist takeover of Shanghai. In the inscription at left, he makes a point of recording that he painted the work in her studio, the Yingyingxuan (Studio of Ying Mei).

In the second inscription, at right, Woo explains more specifically his loneliness and longing. He describes quite vividly a strange experience two days earlier, on December 19. While listening to the sound of wind chimes he suddenly lost consciousness, and when he woke up he felt as though his soul was inexplicably wandering around outside his body. He was sorrowful that in the human world there was no place to bury his worries, and even his soul dream-wandering in a Daoist paradise could not find the path forward.

JA KS

Two Roosters

1952 hanging scroll, ink and color on paper 41.7 × 31 cm

Cincinnati Art Museum

C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by T.H. Wu 2015.317

In Two Roosters, Woo revisits his early Shanghai school style. The brushwork perfectly reflects the foundations of his painting vocabulary in the art of Ren Yi 任頤 (1840–1895). At the time, in this early, optimistic period of the newly established People’s Republic of China, the crowing of the rooster at dawn was seen as a hopeful sign of the potential of the newly united country. It was a very popular subject at the time and many Chinese artists took it as a symbol of the dawn of a new age. The artist chose this painting to reproduce in his portfolio published in Hong Kong in 1963.

JA KS

Tiger Lying in the Palace 虎臥鳳闕

undated ink and color on paper 30.8 × 25.4 cm

The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by T.H. Wu 2011.07.503

The title written by the artist on this painting, Tiger Lying in the Palace, comes from an often-quoted critique by Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty (464–549) of Wang Xizhi’s 王羲之 (303–361) calligraphy. He praised Wang’s forceful brushwork and stable and well-structured characters as resembling dragons leaping the heavenly gate and tigers sleeping in the palace. In a playful gesture, Woo takes the critique literally by painting a sleeping tiger with the vigorous brushstrokes of a leaping dragon. In the inscription Woo writes that his own brushwork cannot compare with the beauty of Wang Xizhi’s, but at least it is free of the vulgarity of a commercial painter. Although this is a subject that was quite popular on the mid-twentieth-century Chinese art market, Woo captures the more expressive style of a literati painter in this work.

JA KS

Cat

undated ink on paper

27 × 26 cm

The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University

C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by T.H Wu 2015.02.21

Although cats appear occasionally in court painting from the Song dynasty and later, they were not a common subject in premodern Chinese painting. One exception is a charming image of a striped tabby painted by the Suzhou scholar-artist Shen Zhou 沈 周 (1427–1509) in his 1494 album Images Drawn from Life. Shen’s work, in ink with only light color, depicts a plump creature foreshortened into an almost spherical shape, with slitted pupils conspicuously aimed toward a target outside the painting’s right border. The fifteenth-century painting was well-published in the twentieth century and might have inspired Woo. In Woo’s similarly frontal depiction of a crouched cat, however, the reflected light in the creature’s eyes and more accurate foreshortening offer a modern challenge to the literati prototype. More directly relevant, however, are paintings of cats by Ren Yi 任頤 (1840–1895) and by Woo’s friend Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻 (1895–1953), both of whom used rich washes to model their animals.

JA KS

52

Peach Blossom

1989 ink and color on paper 15.4 × 23 cm

The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University

C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by T.H. Wu 2011.07.194

Woo passed away on August 12, 1989, at the age of ninety-two. He likely painted Peach Blossom shortly before his death. Using a simple yet beautifully rendered branch of peach blossoms, a motif Woo used throughout his life as a reference to his loving memories of

Shanghai, Woo once more expresses his deep nostalgia for his hometown. In his poem inscription, Woo writes:

一別桃花再見難

夢中寫此聊慰相思 熊去二十六年

矣 而此花常在

It has been twenty-six years since I left [Shanghai], yet this flower has always been with me. Once we parted, it was not easy to see each other again. I painted this from my dreams to express my longing.

HMS

Asking the Way in Autumn Mountains undated

album leaf, ink and color on paper 30.8 × 24.13 cm

The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University C.Y. Woo Collection, donated by T.H. Wu 2015.02.08

A leaf from Woo’s undated album After the Ancients, in the style of the old masters, this complex composition was inspired by the painting of the Yuan-dynasty scholar-painter Wang Meng 王蒙 (ca. 1308–1385). The dry, wavy strokes that texture the distant mountains and resemble the unraveled strands of a rope (hemp-fiber texture strokes) and the partially illuminated boulders at its crest (alum-lump rocks) are earlier conventions that Wang Meng revived. Woo evokes Wang’s style with the densely constructed mountain, rich surface texture, highly animated trees, and constricted space. He further energizes the painting by adding color to the riverside dwelling, bridge, and human figure, in contrast to the monochromatic mountains. Woo differs from Wang Meng, however, in the three strange pine trees at left in the style of Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636), which draw us into the composition. Woo also adds a narrative touch, as the small figure on the bridge turns to face the wind.

JA KS