Matthew Ha Palette Knife Still Life Oil — Chinese Artist, c.1970s View Watchlist >
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Lot # D824
System ID # 27996265
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Matthew Ha Palette Knife Still Life Oil — Chinese Artist, c.1970s
A vibrant palette knife still life by Chinese artist Matthew Ha, executed entirely with the painting knife in heavy impasto. Two floral arrangements flank a low dish of fruit — the smaller potted bouquet at left, a larger urn of mixed blooms at right — built up from ribboned, shingled strokes that read almost sculptural under raking light. The background is scumbled with the flat of the knife in broader sweeps, deliberately flattening the picture plane so color and surface carry the image. A restricted high-key palette of cadmium reds, acid yellows, sap greens, and ultramarine drives the composition through complementary tension rather than depth.
The handling places Ha within the mid-century Post-Impressionist and Expressionist still life tradition — closer in spirit to Soutine, de Staël, and Vlaminck than to any Chinese painting lineage. He is part of a recognizable cohort of mid-20th-century Chinese and Chinese-diaspora artists who absorbed European modernism and worked fully within a Western oil idiom, often reaching American buyers through diplomatic and commercial channels. A peer work by Matthew Ha — a 1976 oil on canvas of Chinese river junks — is held in the Mike Mansfield Collection at the University of Montana Mansfield Library Archives (artifact M76-045), acquired during Senator Mansfield's tenure as Senate Majority Leader and immediately preceding his appointment as US Ambassador to Japan.
Signed lower right "Matthew Ha," the signature incised into wet paint with the knife edge. Presented in a carved wood frame with green-painted recess, bamboo-form inner molding, and a stylized arrowhead outer carving. No glazing.
Condition
Good. Canvas is stable with intact impasto and no visible flaking or restoration. Frame shows minor gilt wear along edges and small chips at the lower corners.
Dimensions / Specifications
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Artist: Matthew Ha (Chinese, mid-20th century)
- Signed: Lower right, "Matthew Ha"
- Period: Circa 1970s
- Frame: Carved wood, no glass
- Visible (Sight) Size: 18" H × 24" W
- Overall (Framed) Size: 22.5" H × 29" W
