CHEN YANNING (CHINESE 1945-) ROARING TIGER ink and colour on paper, framed, titled, stamped and signed upper right (Dimensions: 58.5cm x 38.6cm; 80cm x 58.6cm overall) (Qty: 1) (58.5cm x 38.6cm; 80cm x 58.6cm overall) Qty: (1) Footnote: Provenance: Susan J and Michael Gassaway (Syllavethy Gallery, Aberdeenshire), with a letter of authenticity stating that the work was painted in the gallery during his visit to the Britain in 1986 under the sponsorship of the gallery by an official invitation from The Scottish Arts Council. Note: Mr and Mrs Gassaway met Chen Yanning on a trip to China in 1984, when he was the Head of the Guangdong Institute of Fine Art. To reciprocate his hospitality, Susan and Michael invited Yanning to visit the UK to view some of the Old Masters of Western Art that he had only seen in books back in China. Two years later, Yanning arrived in Aberdeen and together with Susan and Michael, he visited the museums in Scotland and London. Yanning made the museum attendants nervous as he wanted to get up close to study the thickness of paint on his favourite masterpieces. He, Susan and Michael communicated by using sign language and drawing sketches and quickly established a great friendship. Chen Yanning (b.1945) is a Chinese painter who lives and works in the United States. He was born in the southern province of Guangzhou, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1965. He continued to work at the Academy as a painter until 1986 when he relocated to America, to study at Oklahoma City University. His early Chinese works include the poster Chairman Mao Inspects the Guangdong Countryside (1972) and New Doctor of the Fishing Port (1973). He has had many public portrait commissions most notably for the British Royal Family, in which he painted Queen Elizabeth, Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne. Yanning's portrait of the Queen was subsequently used by Royal Mail for the Jubilee Year stamp. Yanning works with oil paint, a medium predominantly used by western artists. Chinese painting was traditionally based on the technique of brush painting, which consisted of similar techniques to calligraphy using black ink or coloured pigments. Although a very different medium to oil paint, Yanning's portraits, in employing an impasto technique, which imbues the surface with an almost blurred washed finish, seems to suggest the sustained influence of his country's native painting. A comparable ink painting of three reclining tigers resting on a rock, also painted by Chen Yanning in 1986, was sold at Duton's Tianjin, China, 18th Dec 2011, lot 115