Sleeping Gibbon

Sleeping Gibbon is an early forgery by Chang Dai-chien, one of China's most influential modern painters. He created Sleeping Gibbon around 1934, when he was relentlessly studying and imitating past masters to hone his own painting skill. Chang liked to test his success by occasionally trying to pass off his forgeries, and he also enjoyed the profits he could reap. He learned to fake physical damage to his paintings to complete their impression of antiquity; note the battered look of this hanging scroll--including the "aged" color of the paper, induced by the artist.

Here, with a minimum of strokes, Chang Dai-chien brushed an image in a style associated with the Southern Song dynasty artist Liang Kai, whose signature he faked, as well. In fact, the brushwork is too loose for a genuine Liang Kai, but Chang knew how rare Liang's works were in China and banked on being able to get away with his sophisticated trickery. He cajoled his friend Puru to write a colophon (sometimes Puru authenticated Chang's forgeries knowingly, and sometimes unwittingly). Whichever the case here, Puru stated that Sleeping Gibbon was a masterpiece in Chang's personal collection of antiquities. When the scroll reached the market, buyers assumed it was an ancient gem Chang had parted with reluctantly. Chang Dai-chien made a second, nearly identical forgery of Sleeping Gibbon that entered the Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1956, before he admitted it was his work.