‘WATER AND RIVER LANDSCAPE’, BY WANG WEIBAO (B. 1942), DATED 1981China. Ink and watercolors on paper, with a silk brocade frame and mounted as a hanging scroll. Finely painted in shades of brown and gray, depicting a river landscape with houses along a shore and a fishing boat on the waterway, with the reflection of mountains in the upper register.Inscriptions: Center left, signed Weibao’ and dated ‘In the Year of Xinyou’ (corresponding to 1981). One seal of the artist, ‘Weibao’. The scroll with an old merchant label, inscribed ‘Wang Weibao (b. 1942), from Jiangjiang’, and another inscribed ‘Hanging scroll with a landscape by Wang Weibao’.Provenance: Christie’s South Kensington, 23 November 1995, lot 423. The Oliver Impey Collection of Modern Paintings, acquired from the above. Oliver Impey (1936-2005) was the President of the Oriental Ceramics Society (1997-2000), a noted curator at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and a leading authority on the arts of Japan. He studied at the University of Oxford,pleting his thesis while working in London at Sotheby’s, where his connoisseur and remarkable breadth of knowledge began to develop, as well as his intimate knowledge of the art trade and vigilant eye for a bargain. In 1967, he was appointed Assistant Keeper for Japanese Art at the Ashmolean, and was able, as a Sotheby’s colleague put it rather bluntly, to move “straight from the whorehouse to the nunnery”. For nearly four decades, Impey was a tireless acquirer of fine objects, vastly expanding the Museum’s holdings. He designed and raised the funds for a new Japanese Decorative Arts gallery to house these treasures, and he also befriended several generous benefactors who made important donations to the Museum. The respect with which he was held in Japan was marked by the award of the Koyama Fujio Memorial Prize in 1997. His personal collection contained works by major masters from Japan, China, and several other Asian countries, of which many were sold by Christie’s in Hong Kong in the late 2000s.Condition: Very good condition with minor wear and little foxing.Dimensions: Image size 68 x 66.6 cmWang Weibao (born in 1942) is a Chinese painter from Jinjiang, Fujian Province. He graduated from the high school attached to the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1963. His first work, ‘Catch the Sparrow’, was published in the newspaper Fujian Daily in 1958, followed by many other examples of his work.王維寳（1942- ）《江邊》中國，紙本水墨設色，掛軸。江邊房屋和江上漁船，山巒的倒影，風格清新秀麗，富有筆墨韻味和生活情趣。款識：辛酉，維寳；鈴印：維寳