Aesthetics are a highly subjective affair. Sure, good taste in the arts, discernment and sophistication, require a certain effort and are mostly an acquired quality. Even so, we are born with an innate ability to tell the ugly from the beautiful, and particularly the Chinese tradition of literati painting and calligraphy has always placed much emphasis on distinguishing the elegant and subtle from the coarse and vulgar. The art of Wu Guanzhong can be seen as a modern extension of the literati tradition: his whole life, Wu was in constant pursuit of the "perfect picture." Painting was not just a way of earning a living, but an ongoing attempt to achieve beauty of form, be it in his oil paintings or his colored inks. Whatever the medium, Wu's oeuvre is very accessible and its beauty readily perceived by most observers—yet at the same time, it is brimming with harmonious elegance and stylish sophistication.

Wu Guanzhong's grace and style have also made him one of the most influential modern Chinese painters. Born in Yixing, Jiangsu, he studied at the Hangzhou College of Arts and spent some three decades of his life in southeastern China, mostly Zhejiang, a fact that has left obvious traces in his art. In 1950 he moved to Beijing, where he would live and work for the rest of his life. But even 60 years in northern China could not eradicate the thoroughly "southern approach" that dominates most of his work. Wu himself once said, "Black, white and gray are the main hues of the south (Jiangnan), and in most of my own work I employ silver and gray tones as basic colors. All my work begins and ends with the south, and in a way I've been painting Jiangnan images and motifs all my life..." Indeed. The South with its sweeping vistas, green paddies and meandering rivers epitomizes the elegant aestheticism that is Wu's trademark.

As a student of Lin Fengmian, Wu Dayu and Pan Tianshou, Wu Guanzhong early on developed a firm grasp of Western oil painting styles and techniques, mastering palette and composition especially well. At the same time, he preserved important features of the Eastern tradition, such as terse, even cryptic, lines and the calligraphic poetry of black ink. Much of the artist's early work features sketches of Chinese landscapes, usually drawn from life in various parts of the country and executed in oil. After 1970, however, Wu began to focus more and more on ink and wash, and by the 1980s he frequently used the splashed-ink technique for increasingly impressionistic or even abstract paintings. His deep roots in Chinese art had taught him great skills with the brush, allowing him to indulge in free-flowing lines, intuitive shading and unrestrained strokes that are yet charged with meaning, while also successfully incorporating into his work elements of the latest Western approaches, such as drip-painting or abstract expressionism. The overall effect is eclectic and cohesive at the same time.

After 1980, Wu gradually began to add colors to his ink paintings, which up to then had been almost purely black-and-white. The result were colored ink landscapes of an astonishing modernity. Chinese art critic Zhai Mo describes the delicate change taking place in Wu's art at this point, "Excising from his paintings all cumbersome facets of emotionality, and shaking the fetters of conventional ink and wash composition, the artist now revels in an intoxicating frenzy of pure creativity, completely detached from formal restraints and figurative considerations. Thick bold lines and freely applied splashes and dashes of color propel his work towards a fundamental change that is not merely quantitative, but qualitative in nature, with Wu showing equal adeptness at bright black shapes and lines, colorful phantasmagorias, or a well-balanced mixture of both." And "bright black is an extremely modern shade, a glowing tinge feeding on brilliantly exaggerated contrasts of shape and color. When it is applied lightly, the effect is softer and fainter than silver-gray, but where the artist employs powerful strokes, the result brims with masculine vitality. It can be scorching and bright as the Sun or cool and dark as the Moon, and it has freed itself from all attachment to a specific medium. Entirely independent, this color is capable of connecting with modern people's sensitivities and winding its way straight into our souls. But the process from pure white to bright and brimming black is by no means linear; rather, it is a circular motion that yet manages to reach higher planes by spiraling from one level to the next as Wu Guanzhong explores ever new fusions of light hues, quiet tones, and thick and profound explosions of color." (taken from: Zhai Mo, Searching for Paradise: Introduction to the Paintings of Wu Guanzhong)

Between the 1980s and the 1990s, Wu Guanzhong's art reached a new pinnacle of expressiveness, and this lot, "Plum Blossom in the Snow", is one of the representative pieces from the artist's "bright black" period. All works in this series are coveted collector's items and treasured by museums around the world. In 1992, a large set of modern-style colored ink paintings by Wu Guanzhong was shown in a solo exhibition at the British Museum—the first time such an honor was bestowed upon a living Chinese painter. One of the pictures in the set, the buoyant "Paradise for Small Birds", was chosen by the British Museum for their permanent collection. The present lot shares with "Paradise for Small Birds" a similar basic horizontal composition, which is perhaps not surprising considering Wu's background in classical Chinese painting and calligraphy. The centers of both paintings are dominated by dense black structures, skillfully placed, which form the main trunk from which thinner, slightly less substantial and copiously intersecting lines are branching out in all directions: it is hard not to be reminded of Chinese calligraphy. The exquisitely proportioned leaves and blossoms bespeak the artist's excellent sense of spacing and color. The mottled approach, delicately interspersing the composition with sprinkled dots and flecks of brilliant shades, gives "Plum Blossom in the Snow" an impressionistic touch that is wonderfully balanced by its overall abstract-expressive quality.

Wu Guanzhong's colored inks are highly regarded among art critics and the academia. On the international art market, they are coveted by many collectors. An example is "Parrot Paradise", which shows a similar compositional structure and was sold at a 2005 Beijing auction for more than Renminbi 30 million. Meanwhile, Wu's "Lion Woods", an oversized colored ink, achieved a record price of over Renminbi 100 million at an auction in June 2011. From the same period in the artist's career, "Plum Blossom in the Snow" is another very attractive lot that displays the artist's gentle fusion of Eastern and Western styles to create an exuberant and carefree brand of impressionistic beauty, perfectly capturing the fragile charm of a plum tree blossoming in the snow—a theme very much in the literati tradition. As Wu puts it, the fragrance of the plum flower is the direct result of the harsh conditions in which it yet manages to thrive, giving it its special place in the Chinese cosmos. "It is only through the karmic wheel of birth and rebirth that the kaleidoscopic variety of our world is brought about." "Plum Blossom in the Snow" is not just an aesthetically pleasing painting, it also bears witness to a life spent in the pursuit of the "perfect picture"–and few of Wu's paintings could do so more eloquently.