 |
It is a good day for trade as a warm September sun adds to the genial quality of this Plains gathering. From the early 19th century to the 1870s, trade for furs and hides was a lucrative business. Traders and bands of Plains Tribes would gather at prearranged locations and exchange tools, cloth, blankets, finery and guns for the Indians’ pelts and hides. This group of Indians is well known to the traders, as the chief trader has been married to the sister of this band’s chief for several years. Other members of the trading party have Indian wives as well, so a familial atmosphere of mutual trust and friendship prevails.
Z.S. Liang’s "Trading with the Blackfeet, Montana Territory, 1860" is regarded as one of his finest works to date. At the 2009 Master’s of the American West Fine Art Exhibition and Sale, where it set a record sale price for a Liang original, the work received the David P. Usher Patrons’ Choice Award, an honor bestowed on the painting by collectors attending the event.
|
|
|
Z.S. Liang, born in China in 1953 and raised in a family of artists, published
his first painting at age 6 in a children’s magazine. His art education
spanned two continents, beginning at the Central Academy of Fine Art in
Beijing and continuing to the Massachusetts College of Art and Boston
University. His award-winning paintings hang in both corporate and private
collections around the world and several of his murals are permanently on
display in New York City.
His works are in corporate and private collections throughout the
United States and many other countries, including Sheraton Corporation,
Marriott Corporation, Weseda University Tokyo and the West Point Museum. Among
the many awards Liang has received are the Best of Show and People’s Choice at
the American Society of Portrait Artists, the Arthur Ross Award for Painting
at the Classical America New York, and the Lila Acheson Wallace Award for
Painting at the Society of American Illustrators. Liang’s paintings have been
featured in the Artist’s Magazine and the International Artists.
|
|
