Small Birds, Bamboo and Rocks

In its current form, this painting is particularly unusual in that only two-thirds were actually painted by Bada Shanren. The remaining third (on the right) was added by the modern painter and collector Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), who believed the work to have been much larger originally than when he acquired it in the early 1950s. Both brushwork and ink tonality provide viewers with a vivid example of the differences between Bada Shanren's approach and that of his most important and prolific recent forger, Zhang Daqian. These differences can be further explored in the related paintings exhibited on the walls to left and right, one by each artist.

Zhang attached two strips of paper to either side of Bada's original painting, inscribed his own colophon, and "restored" a corner of the rock and foreground on the right side by adding a few strokes. As he states in his 1952 inscription: "Modern enthusiasts [of painting] prize small hanging scrolls the most, with around three feet as the norm. This custom has spread throughout north and south alike, but is particularly prevalent in the Wuzhong [region of Jiangsu Province]. There, whenever a dealer of antiquities comes across a large-scale hanging scroll, he will chop it down in size hoping to better his price. The damage [such a practice has inflicted] on the heart's blood of earlier masters is more vicious and cruel than [the tortures of] an executioner. On acquiring this scroll recently in Hong Kong, I felt sorry for its broken state and got the idea of adding a few strokes to fix it up. While I could not make it shine like the masterpiece it once was, or immediately restore the painting to its former appearance, I privately compare [my added brushstrokes] to a blind man's cane: As consolation, they are better than nothing. "

Translation by Stephen D. Allee