Splendid Autumn Mountains

Inscription: Artist’s inscriptions and signatures (4 columns in standard/semi-cursive script followed by 8 columns in semi-cursive script)

Splendid Autumn Mountains

Painted loosely in the style of Fangshan [Gao Kegong, 1248–1310] in the autumn of the jiazi year (1924). Dedicated to Shaofu in celebration of his seventieth birthday. [Signed] Zeng Xi from Hengyang [in Hunan Province].

As soon as I finished this painting, an old friend of Shaofu saw it and esteemed it highly. He bought it for one hundred silver dollars, saying Shaofu was infatuated with my landscapes and nothing could be better than to give him this as a present. To my friend Mr. Wu, many thanks for his appreciation of my work. Xi noted again on the same day.

[Translation by Keita Itoh and Lawrence Wu with Jean Schmitt and Caron Smith in Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, ed., Later Chinese Painting and Calligraphy: 1800–1950, Volume I: Text, New York: Random House, 1986, p. 126. Modified. The Romanization of Chinese characters has been changed from the Wade-Giles system to the pinyin system.]

秋山錦繡

甲子秋略倣房山大意，寫上少甫先生七十大壽。衡陽曾熙

此幅寫成，適少甫先生之世友見之，激賞無已，遂以白金相易。且曰少甫先生最癖愛髯山水，而後生非此無以爲敬。世友吳君鑒蓋，素承先生知愛也。同日熙并記。


Artist’s seals

Zeng Xi zhi yin 曾熙之印
Nongran 農髯
Xintaiping An zhu心太平庵主
Yongjian Zhai 永建齋
Nongran liushi hou zuo 農髯六十後作


Collector’s seals

An Siyuan 安思遠 (Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, 1929–2014)
An Siyuan cang 安思遠藏
Songpu Lu cang 松瀑廬藏

Robert H. Ellsworth American, New York (until 1986; donated to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Painting: Selections from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection," February 2–September 25, 1988.