Two landmarks of 20th-century Chinese ink painting headline Christie's sale of Fine Chinese Modern and Contemporary Ink Paintings in Hong Kong on 28 October 2026. The leading lot is Li Keran's Sailing in River Li, painted in 1972 and estimated at HK$6.5 million to HK$8.5 million before buyer's premium, joined by Zhang Daqian's Hidden Lagoon of 1969, estimated at HK$3 million to HK$5 million.

Li Keran's picture is a large ink-and-colour work on paper, measuring 112 by 145 centimetres, from a private Hong Kong collection. It shows the Li River winding between limestone mountains, with small sails giving scale to the scene. The artist first visited Guilin on a study trip in 1959 and returned repeatedly to its scenery, but the 1972 date carries a particular weight: the painting followed years in which his practice had been interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, and it dates from his return to Beijing and to large-format painting, at a time when official commissions for buildings receiving foreign visitors were helping to restart artistic work.

Zhang Daqian's Hidden Lagoon, at 45 by 73 centimetres, belongs to a different phase of Chinese painting's modern history. Painted in 1969, it uses bold passages of azurite and malachite colour over ink, with cliffs, buildings and a small boat carrying two scholars emerging from the pigment. The work was shown at the Laky Gallery in Carmel in May 1970 and bought from that exhibition by its present owner, giving it a short, clearly documented provenance. Zhang, who had lived outside mainland China since 1949, was by then blending traditional ink technique with impressions gathered abroad, including in California.

The pairing also sets two market profiles side by side. Zhang generated about $97 million at auction in 2025, making him the leading Chinese artist by auction turnover that year, while Li Keran ranks 193rd among the world's top 500 artists by 2026 turnover. The sale, held at Christie's Hong Kong premises in Central, will test how collectors weigh a monumental river landscape against a compact, colour-saturated experiment from the same era of reinvention.