Matthew Wong (1984–2019) occupies a singular and deeply moving position in contemporary painting. Born in Toronto and largely self-taught, Wong developed, in the span of less than a decade, a body of work that feels both historically grounded and intensely personal. His paintings—lush, melancholic, and vibrantly chromatic—are less depictions of the external world than projections of an inner landscape shaped by solitude, introspection, and an acute sensitivity to color and form. Wong’s trajectory is as remarkable as it is poignant. Without formal academic training in painting, he began his artistic practice relatively late, initially working through ink drawings before transitioning to painting around 2016. His rapid evolution and unmistakable voice quickly drew critical attention, positioning him as one of the most compelling painters of his generation before his untimely death in 2019.

Introduction

Matthew Wong was born in 1984 in Toronto, Canada; when Wong was seven years old, his family emigrated to Hong Kong, but they returned to Toronto when Wong was 15. The decision to return to Canada was partly influenced by Wong’s health – Wong was on the autism spectrum, had Tourette’s syndrome and had been diagnosed with depression at a young age.

Wong graduated from high school in Canada and earned a Bachelor’s of Art in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2007. Following graduation, Wong returned to Hong Kong – over the next several years, he held various desk jobs. In 2010, Wong enrolled at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong, earning a Masters of Fine Art in photography in 2013. At that point, however, Wong’s interest in photography began to flag, leading him to begin drawing. By 2014, Wong began to experiment with landscape painting. In 2015, the Hong Kong Visual Arts Center held the first solo exhibition of Wong’s paintings. The artworks drew attention online, leading to Wong’s inclusion in Karma gallery’s 2016 exhibition “Outside,” held in Amagansett, New York. In 2018, Karma Gallery held the first solo exhibition of Wong’s work.

Artistic Influences and a Dialogue with Art History

Wong’s work is deeply rooted in a dialogue with art history, yet never derivative. His paintings openly engage with figures such as Vincent van Gogh, whose emotional intensity and expressive brushwork resonate throughout Wong’s landscapes, and Henri Matisse, particularly in his use of color as a structural and emotional force.

At the same time, Wong draws from a wide spectrum of influences, including Chinese literati painting and ink traditions, as well as modern and contemporary painters such as Etel Adnan and Gustav Klimt. His work can be understood as a synthesis of these references, Western and Eastern, historical and contemporary, filtered through a distinctly personal sensibility. This layered engagement with art history gives his paintings a sense of familiarity, yet they remain unmistakably his own: intimate, introspective, and quietly monumental.

Landscapes, Interiors, and the Poetics of Isolation

Wong’s practice is structured around a few recurring themes, landscapes, interiors, and still lifes, which together form a cohesive exploration of solitude and perception. His landscapes, often populated by winding paths, clustered houses, or luminous trees, are not topographical records but psychological spaces. They evoke places that feel remembered rather than observed, suspended between reality and imagination.

His interiors, by contrast, are enclosed and contemplative. Windows, tables, and solitary objects become focal points within compressed spaces, reinforcing a sense of quiet introspection. Even in the absence of figures, these works are deeply human, charged with presence and emotion. Across these series, Wong constructs a world that is both inviting and distant—a place of refuge that simultaneously underscores isolation.

Technique and Painterly Language

Wong worked primarily in oil on canvas, developing a highly distinctive painterly language characterized by dense, rhythmic brushwork and intricate patterning. His surfaces are often built through repeated marks—dots, dashes, and short strokes—that create a pulsating visual texture.

Color is central to his practice. Saturated blues, luminous yellows, deep greens, and vibrant reds interact across the canvas, generating both harmony and tension. His compositions are carefully structured, yet they retain a sense of immediacy, as though the image were unfolding in real time.

His earlier ink works on paper remain an essential part of his practice, revealing a more restrained yet equally expressive approach, rooted in line and gesture.

Exhibition History and Institutional Recognition

Despite the brevity of his career, Matthew Wong achieved significant institutional recognition. His work has been exhibited at major institutions, including the Dallas Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario, which have played key roles in introducing his work to broader audiences.

A major posthumous retrospective, Matthew Wong: Blue View, organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, further cemented his position within the contemporary canon. His works are now held in important public collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, reflecting a rapid and profound institutional embrace.

Gallery Representation and Market Trajectory

Matthew Wong was represented during his lifetime by Karma, which played a pivotal role in bringing his work to prominence. Since his passing, the gallery has continued to steward his legacy, organizing exhibitions and placing works in major collections.

Toward the end of his life, and in the years immediately following his passing, his work was also presented by Cheim & Read, where he held significant exhibitions that contributed to his rapid institutional and market recognition.

Matthew Wong’s work carries a rare emotional clarity. It speaks to themes of solitude, longing, and the search for beauty within constraint, yet it does so without sentimentality. His paintings are luminous and melancholic, structured yet fragile—images that seem to hold both presence and absence at once. In the context of contemporary painting, Wong’s legacy is already profound. He reactivated a dialogue with art history while asserting a deeply personal voice, demonstrating that painting remains a vital and evolving medium. What endures in his work is not only its visual power, but its sincerity—a quality that continues to resonate with viewers and ensures his place within the broader narrative of modern and contemporary art.

PART I: SUMMARY

Auction Market Overview

2025 AUCTION STATISTICS
Turnover: USD 5,317,412
-14.9% (vs. 2024)
# Lots sold: 6
Sell-Through Rate: 100%

MARKET SEGMENTATION
COMING SOON

Highest Price Achieved at Auction:
HKD 52,297,000 / USD 6,662,213
(5 April 2023)

Wong’s market trajectory has been extraordinary. In a remarkably short period, his paintings moved from relative obscurity to achieving significant results at auction, with strong demand from both private collectors and institutions. This rapid ascent reflects not only market dynamics, but also a broader recognition of the depth and resonance of his work.

Auction Summary

2025 Auction Highlights

6 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a total turnover of USD 5,317,412. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The highest price of 2025 was achieved by The Gentle Sea, a painting dated 2017, that sold at Sotheby’s in New-York on 18 November 2025 for USD 2,368,000.

2025 Top 3 Lots

2 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 3,593,296, representing 67.6% of the total turnover of 2025.

2024 Auction Highlights

7 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 6,245,660. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. One lot was withdrawn from Christie’s in Hong-Kong on 28 May 2024. The highest price was achieved at Sotheby’s in London on 9 October 2024, when Moonlight Mile, a painting dated 2017 sold for GBP 1,563,816 (USD 2,048,599).

2024 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 5,175,010, representing 83% of the total turnover for 2024.

2023 Auction Highlights

8 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 20,314,306. Sell-Through rate is 100%, however one painting, Pink Sunset, was withdrawn from Phillips New-York Evening Auction on 15 November 2023. The highest price was achieved at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong on 5 April 2023, when River at Dusk (2018) sold for HKD 52,297,000 (USD 6,661,953).

2023 Top 3 Lots

5 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 18,787,556, representing 92.5% of the total turnover for 2023. 4 lots sold in Hong-Kong, including the top 2 lots, representing 65.7% of the total turnover for 2023.

2022 Auction Highlights

7 lots sold at auction in 2022 generating a total turnover of USD 20,776,132. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is a perfect 100%. However, two lots were withdrawn from auction at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong. The top price was achieved by The Night Watcher, a painting dated 2018, that sold for USD 5,897,150 at Sotheby’s in New-York on 19 May 2022.

2022 Top 3 Lots

5 lots sold over USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 19,403,699, representing 93.4% of the total turnover for 2022. Only one lot sold in Hong-Kong in 2022.

2021 Auction Highlights

23 lots sold at auction in 2021 generating a total turnover of USD 46,971,437. 2021 was a record year for Matthew Wong at auction, with 23 lots sold generating a turnover of USD 46,971,437. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The top lot, Night Crossing, dated 2018, sold for USD 4,860,000 at Sotheby’s in New-York on 18 November 2021.

2021 Top 3 Lots

15 lots sold over USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 42,914,478, representing 91.4% of the total turnover at auction for 2021.

Top Lots

#1. River at Dusk, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 52,297,000 / USD 6,662,213

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | River at Dusk 黃昏的河流 | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
River at Dusk, 2018
Oil on canvas
80×70 inches (203.2 x 177.8 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

#2. The Night Watcher, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 19 May 2022
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 5,897,150

The Night Watcher | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG
The Night Watcher, 2018
Oil on canvas
60×48 inches (152.4×122 cm)

#3. Green Room, 2017

Christie’s New-York: 10 May 2022
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 5,340,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Green Room, 2017
Oil on canvas
96×72 inches (243.8 x 182.9 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘GREEN ROOM’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

#4. Night Crossing, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2021
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 4,860,000

Night Crossing | The Now Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Night Crossing, 2018
Oil on canvas
48×60 inches (122×152 cm)
Signed 王, titled and dated 二0一八 (on the reverse)

#5. Figure in a Night Landscape, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 8 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD 36,550,000 / USD 4,710,112

PART II: AUCTION RESULTS

2026 Auction Results

PRELIMINARY AUCTION RESULTS
As of 15 June 2026

#1. Winter’s End, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2026
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 2,485,000

Matthew Wong | Winter’s End | The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Winter’s End, 2019
Oil on canvas
30×40 inches (76×102 cm)
Signed and dated 2019 in Chinese (on the reverse)
Titled (on the reverse)

#2. The Recluse, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 2 June 2026
Estimated: HKD 5,500,000 – 8,500,000
HKD 14,190,000 / USD 1,810,450

Matthew Wong Modern & Contemporary Art

REPEAT SALE

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 20 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,000,000 – 2,000,000
HKD 5,499,000 / USD 708,535

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | The Recluse 隱居者 | Contemporary Art Day Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG
The Recluse, 2017
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed, titled and dated
‘”THE RECLUSE” Wong 2017 [in Chinese]’
on the reverse

USD 1 million

#3. Untitled, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 29 March 2026
Estimated: HKD 4,500,000 – 6,500,000
HKD 5,120,000 / USD 653,895

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | Untitled 無題 | Modern & Contemporary Evening

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Untitled, 2019
Oil on canvas
20×16 inches (51×41 cm)

#4. The Island, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 29 March 2026
Estimated: HKD 3,200,000 – 5,000,000
HKD 3,840,000 / USD 490,420

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | The Island 島嶼 | Modern & Contemporary Evening

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
The Island, 2017
Oil on canvas
40 x 29-7/8 inches (101.5 x 76 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled in English and dated 2017 in Chinese (on the reverse)

#5. Ruins, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 15 May 2026
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 384,000

Matthew Wong | Ruins | Contemporary Day Auction | 2026 | Sotheby’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Ruins, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed and dated 2016 in Chinese (on the reverse)
Titled (on the reverse)

2025 Auction Results

6 lots sold at auction in 2025 for a total turnover of USD 5,317,412. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The highest price of 2025 was achieved by The Gentle Sea, a painting dated 2017, that sold at Sotheby’s in New-York on 18 November 2025 for USD 2,368,000.

2025 Top 3 Lots

2 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 3,593,296, representing 67.6% of the total turnover of 2025.

#1. The Gentle Sea, 2017

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2025
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 2,368,000
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

The Gentle Sea | The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Gentle Sea, 2017
Oil on canvas
40×30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Signed and dated 2017 in Chinese (on the reverse)
Titled (on the reverse)

#2. The Visit, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 16 October 2025
Estimated: GBP 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
GBP 914,400 / USD 1,225,295
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

The Visit | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Visit, 2017
Oil on canvas
36×48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)

USD 1 million

#3. Into the Night, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 28 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 3,800,000 – 5,500,000
HKD 5,842,000 / USD 750,900
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | Into the Night 長夜行 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Into the Night, 2019
Oil on canvas
41 x 30.5 cm (16 1/8 x 12 inches)
Titled in English, signed and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

#4. 5:22 PM, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 30 September 2025
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 660,400
READ MORE IN FOCUS SECTION

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019), 5:22 PM | Christie’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
5:22 PM, 2018
Oil on canvas
20×16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
Signed and dated in Chinese and titled ‘5:22 PM’ (on the reverse)

#5. Orange Twilight, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 19 November 2025
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 228,600
WORK ON PAPER

Orange Twilight | Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Orange Twilight, 2018
Gouache and watercolor on paper
18×24 inches (45.7 x 61 cm)
Signed and dated 2018 in Chinese (on the verso)
Titled (on the verso)

USD 100,000

#6. Untitled, 2015

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 29 March 2025
Estimated: HKD 200,000 – 300,000
HKD 655,200 / USD 84,215
WORK ON PAPER

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019), Untitled | Christie’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Untitled, 2015
Acrylic on paper
50×40 cm (19 5/8 x 15 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated in Chinese, titled ‘UNTITLED’ (on the reverse)

2024 Auction Results

7 lots sold at auction in 2024 for a total turnover of USD 6,245,660. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. One lot was withdrawn from Christie’s in Hong-Kong on 28 May 2024. The highest price was achieved at Sotheby’s in London on 9 October 2024, when Moonlight Mile, a painting dated 2017 sold for GBP 1,563,816 (USD 2,048,599).

2024 Top 3 Lots

3 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 5,175,010, representing 83% of the total turnover for 2024.

#1. Moonlight Mile, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 9 October 2024
Estimated: GBP 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
GBP 1,563,816 / USD 2,048,599

Moonlight Mile | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Moonlight Mile, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
26×58 inches (66 x 147.3 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2017 in Chinese (on the reverse)

#2. Untitled, 2017

Phillips New-York: 19 November 2024
Estimated: USD 1,o00,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,754,000

Matthew Wong – Modern & Contemporary… Lot 2 November 2024 | Phillips

#3. Another Day, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 10,735,000 / USD 1,372,411

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | Another Day 另一天 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

REPEAT SALE

Christie’s New-York: 3 December 2020
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 990,000

Matthew Wong (1984-2019), Another Day | Christie’s (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Another Day, 2018
Oil on canvas
183×178 cm (72×70 inches)
Signed and dated 2018 in Chinese, and titled in English on the reverse

USD 1 million

#4. The Lagoon, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 400,000
USD 444,500

The Lagoon | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s

REPEAT SALE

Sotheby’s New-York: 12 March 2021
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 428,400

The Lagoon | Contemporary Curated | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

#6. Open Book, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 14 May 2024
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 241,300
WORK ON PAPER

Open Book | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s

MATHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Untitled, 2018
Hand-painted book
10 1/8 x 8 1/8 inches (25.7 x 20.6 cm)
Signed and numbered 13/100 (on the flyleaf)
This work is number 13 from an edition of 100 of which 26 unique, hand-painted versions were produced

2023 Auction Results

8 lots sold at auction in 2023 for a total turnover of USD 20,314,306. Sell-Through rate is 100%, however one painting, Pink Sunset, was withdrawn from Phillips New-York Evening Auction on 15 November 2023. The highest price was achieved at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong on 5 April 2023, when River at Dusk (2018) sold for HKD 52,297,000 (USD 6,661,953).

2023 Top 3 Lots

5 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 18,787,556, representing 92.5% of the total turnover for 2023. 4 lots sold in Hong-Kong, including the top 2 lots, representing 65.7% of the total turnover for 2023.

#1. River at Dusk, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 52,297,000 / USD 6,662,213

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | River at Dusk 黃昏的河流 | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
River at Dusk, 2018
Oil on canvas
80×70 inches (203.2 x 177.8 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 March 2023
Estimated: HKD 24,000,000 – 35,000,000
HKD 36,145,000 / USD 4,604,517

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempor… Lot 8 March 2023 | Phillips

#3. Night 1, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 4,164,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Night 1, 2018
Oil on canvas
70×60 inches (177.8 x 152.4 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘NIGHT 1’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

#4. The Jungle, 2017

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 May 2023
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,754,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Jungle, 2017
Oil on canvas
30×40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2017 (on the reverse)

#5. The Golden Age, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 14,000,000 – 22,000,000
HKD 12,550,000 / USD 1,603,086

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | The Golden Age 黃金時代 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Golden Age, 2018
Oil on canvas
80×65 inches (203.2 x 165.1 cm)
Initialed, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

USD 1 million

#6. First Snow, 2018

Phillips New-York: 16 May 2023
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 609,600

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempor… Lot 301 May 2023 | Phillips

Phillips Hong-Kong: 31 March 2023
Estimated: HKD 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
HKD 3,810,000 / USD 485,357

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contemp… Lot 114 March 2023 | Phillips

#8. Blue Tree, 2016

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 431,800

2022 Auction Results

7 lots sold at auction in 2022 generating a total turnover of USD 20,776,132. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is a perfect 100%. However, two lots were withdrawn from auction at Sotheby’s in Hong-Kong. The top price was achieved by The Night Watcher, a painting dated 2018, that sold for USD 5,897,150 at Sotheby’s in New-York on 19 May 2022.

2022 Top 3 Lots

Sotheby’s New-York: 19 May 2022
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 5,897,150

MATTHEW WONG
The Night Watcher, 2018
Oil on canvas
60×48 inches (152.4×122 cm)

#2. Green Room, 2017

Christie’s New-York: 10 May 2022
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 5,340,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Green Room, 2017
Oil on canvas
96×72 inches (243.8 x 182.9 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘GREEN ROOM’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

#3. Day 1, 2018

Phillips New-York: 18 May 2022
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 3,176,000

#4. Pink Wave, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 22 June 2022
Estimated: HKD 16,000,000 – 26,000,000
HKD 22,635,000 / USD 2,883,549

#5. The Edge, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 20 May 2022
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 2,107,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Edge, 2019
Oil on canvas
30×40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Signed 王, titled and dated 二0九 (on the reverse)

#6. Arcadia, 2017

Christie’s London: 1 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 250,000 – 350,000
GBP 604,800 / USD 805,433

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Arcadia, 2017
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘ARCADIA’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

#7. Mili’s Corner, 2019

Christie’s New-York: 13 May 2022
Estimated: USD 380,000 – 450,000
USD 567,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Mili’s Corner, 2019
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled and dated in Chinese ‘Mili’s Corner’ (on the reverse)

The Climb, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 27 May 2022
Estimated: HKD 800,000 – 1,200,000
HKD 1,197,000 / USD 152,490
WORK ON PAPER

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019), The Climb | Christie’s (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
The Climb, 2018
Gouache on paper
16×12 inches (40.6 x 30.5 cm)
Signed and dated in Chinese, titled ‘The Climb’ (on the reverse)

2021 Auction Results

23 lots sold at auction in 2021 for a total turnover of USD 46,971,437. 2021 was a record year for Matthew Wong at auction, with 23 lots sold generating a turnover of USD 46,971,437. With no lot failing to sell, the sell-through rate is 100%. The top lot, Night Crossing, dated 2018, sold for USD 4,860,000 at Sotheby’s in New-York on 18 November 2021.

2021 Top 3 Lots

15 lots sold for more than USD 1 million, generating a cumulative turnover of USD 42,914,478, representing 91.4% of the total turnover at auction for 2021.

#1. Night Crossing, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2021
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 4,860,000

Night Crossing | The Now Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Night Crossing, 2018
Oil on canvas
48×60 inches (122×152 cm)
Signed 王, titled and dated 二0一八 (on the reverse)

#2. Figure in a Night Landscape, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 8 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD 36,550,000 / USD 4,710,112

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempor… Lot 10 June 2021 | Phillips

MATTHEW WONG
Figure in a Night Landscape, 2017
Oil on canvas
48×72 inches (121.9 x 182.9 cm)
Signed, titled and dated ‘“FIGURE IN A NIGHT LANDSCAPE” Wong 2017 [in Chinese]’ on the reverse

---

USD 4 million

---

#3. NIGHT 2, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 24 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,800,000 – 8,800,000
HKD 30,250,000 / USD 3,895,635

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
NIGHT 2, 2018
Oil on canvas
60×60 inches (152.5 x 152.5 cm)
Signed and dated in Chinese, titled ‘NIGHT 2 (on the reverse)

#4. Untitled, 2017

Christie’s London: 23 March 2021
Estimated: GBP 500,000 – 700,000
GBP 2,772,500 / USD 3,755,172

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Untitled, 2017
Oil on canvas
72×48 inches (182.6 x 121.9 cm)

#5. Yellow Brick Road, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
HKD 29,050,000 / USD 3,727,395

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Yellow Brick Road, 2018
Oil on canvas
40 1/4 x 30 1/8 inches (102.2 x 76.6 cm)
Signed and dated in Chinese, titled ‘YELLOW BRICK ROAD’ (on the reverse)

#6. The Beginning, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 26,795,000 / USD 3,450,207

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Beginning, 2017
Oil on canvas
48×72 inches (122×183 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled and dated 2017 on the reverse

---

USD 4 million

---

#7. Field in a Dream, 2014-2017

Phillips New-York: 23 June 2021
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 2,934,000

MATTHEW WONG
Field in a Dream, 2014-2017
Oil on canvas
86 3/4 x 67 inches (220.3 x 170.2 cm)
Signed, titled and dated “FIELD IN A DREAM 王 二零一四 — 二零一七” on the reverse

#8. Far Away Eyes, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 21,183,000 / USD 2,716,849

#10. The Reader, 2017

Phillips New-York: 23 June 2021
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 2,329,000

#11. Luminous Night, 2017

#12. Lotus, 2017

Phillips New-York: 3 March 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 1,663,500

Matthew Wong – New Now New York Lot 23 March 2021 | Phillips

MATTHEW WONG
Lotus, 2017
Oil on canvas
60×40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm)
Signed and dated “Wong 2017” [in Chinese] and titled “LOTUS” on the reverse

#15. Nature’s Church, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 9,204,000 / USD 1,180,469

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 14 November 2021 | Phillips

#16. The Levels, 2016

Christie’s New-York: 12 November 2021
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 870,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019), The Levels | Christie’s (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
The Levels, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
40×30 inches (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘THE LEVELS’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

#17. The Recluse, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 20 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,000,000 – 2,000,000
HKD 5,499,000 / USD 708,535

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | The Recluse 隱居者 | Contemporary Art Day Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Recluse, 2017
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed, initialed and dated 2017 on the reverse

#18. The River, 2018

Sotheby’s London: 25 March 2021
Estimated: GBP 300,000 – 400,000
GBP 402,200 / USD 551,790

The River |《河》 | Modern Renaissance: A Cross-Category Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
The River, 2018
Oil on canvas
40×30 inches (101.8 x 76.2 cm)
Titled on the reverse; signed and dated 2018 in Chinese on the reverse

#19. The Lagoon, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 12 March 2021
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 428,400

The Lagoon | Contemporary Curated | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Lagoon, 2016
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Titled on the reverse

#21. Adam and Eve, 2016

Christie’s New-York: 12 November 2021
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 375,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019), Adam and Eve | Christie’s (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Adam and Eve, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
30×40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘ADAM AND EVE’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

#23. Mermaid, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 13 May 2021
Estimated: USD 150,000 – 200,000
USD 277,200

Mermaid | Contemporary Art Day Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Mermaid, 2016
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 by 50.8 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled and dated 2016 in Chinese on the reverse

Interior with View of Night Sky, 2018

Untitled, 2018

PART III: FOCUS

Record Breakers

River at Dusk, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 52,297,000 / USD 6,662,213

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | River at Dusk 黃昏的河流 | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
River at Dusk, 2018
Oil on canvas
80×70 inches (203.2 x 177.8 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

An iridescent patchwork of color, River at Dusk (2018) is a superlative masterwork by Matthew Wong, in which an emerald, green river meanders down the heart of the canvas, snaking its way through the artist’s signature chromatic lollipop trees. An archetypal example teeming with Wong’s lively brushwork and impasto dabs and dots that dance across the canvas, River at Dusk captures the quintessential essence of dusk, expressing the artist’s unparalleled ability of depicting a familiar, specific moment in time whether it be Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, dawn, dusk or night. Wong created this work the year before his passing, employing saturated pigments of orange, yellows, purples and greens to achieve this precise time and feeling of twilight. That same year, the artist examined the same scene but at night, employing a darker palette of blue hues to achieve River at Night and realizing a different, more melancholic mood. Towering two metres in height, River at Dusk envelops the viewer in Wong’s rich dreamscape of pointillist dots and impastoed dabs, deriving from memories and his mental database of artists and artworks that he encountered online, spanning centuries and genres.

Wong’s artistic language synthesizes endless artistic references in his own distinctive manner, articulating an enchantingly vulnerable, immersive and acutely alluring language rich in chromatic, spatial and psychological complexities. Wong’s unique vocabulary is characterized by intricate tactile surfaces, spirited abstracted strokes, ebulliently radiant palettes, and dramatic foreshortening that recall modernist spatial abstractions. Earnest, urgent, yet always sublimely graceful, the works are tinged with a melancholy that extends from the personal to the universal.

The Night Watcher, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 19 May 2022
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 5,897,150

The Night Watcher | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG
The Night Watcher, 2018
Oil on canvas
60×48 inches (152.4×122 cm)

Dizzying and soothing in equal measure, Matthew Wong’s The Night Watcher reveals the range of the artist’s idiosyncratic visual language of texture and color as he captures the serenity of a turquoise forest nightscape in its full kaleidoscopic brilliance. Like Caspar David Friedrich, Vincent Van Gogh, and others of his Romantic and Impressionist forebears, Wong was deeply moved by the natural world, expressing his contemplative fascination with nature through scintillating visions that combine the stylistic grace of Gustav Klimt’s jewel-like paintings and Peter Doig’s fantastical dreamscapes. A self-taught artist, Wong studied the styles of painters such as Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Pierre Bonnard as well as Chinese landscape painting, carefully absorbing them as he clicked through images of art on Instagram or flipped through reference books in local libraries. Wong, an avid daydreamer, painted from raw gestural intuition, elaborating the quick flashes of imagery that his mind recalled often randomly in vague yet lingering glimpses.

Wong’s virtuosic handling of paint in The Night Watcher draws the viewer into his prismatic nightscape as dots, wiggles, and strokes coalesce with feeling in a meditatively lustrous symphony. Trees seem to whistle in speckles of radiant yellows and whites, harmonizing with the cool blues of the night. This in turn creates a turquoise rhapsody that is interrupted by nothing other than the alluring auburn glow of the full moon, and the lone pilgrim shrouded in red, wandering below. In scale, the pensive “night watcher” pales in comparison to the surrounding wilderness, emphasizing the grandeur of the fantastical natural landscape.

Green Room, 2017

Christie’s New-York: 10 May 2022
Estimated: USD 1,500,000 – 2,000,000
USD 5,340,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Green Room, 2017
Oil on canvas
96×72 inches (243.8 x 182.9 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘GREEN ROOM’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

A vast window onto a mysterious world, at eight feet by six feet, Green Room is a wondrous, joyful standout in the artist’s career and one of few canvases of this monumental size.

Green Room is presided over by its namesake color, which Wong dots across the canvas and interweaves with white and light yellow. It is as if the air itself is a garden populated by weightless flora and enveloped in a curtain of leaves and berries. On the left of the scene is what appears to be a door with an envelope affixed to it, perhaps just an everyday reminder or something of dramatic import. Wong is above all a storyteller, using color and pattern alongside markers of domesticity to create lasting dramas and ballets of dancing hues. The room is populated by an orchid and fruits that are so immediate and beckoning that they have stories and lives of their own. Through the window is a charming landscape of oranges, blues, and greens that work in unexpected harmony, as with the distinctive pigments of the Impressionists. With multiple perspectives and vantagepoints existing simultaneously, Green Room expands upon the evocative play of flatness and depth of references as diverse as Yayoi Kusama’s colorful fields of pattern and color, Matisse’s dreamy interiors, especially his The Dessert: Harmony in Red (1908), also called fittingly The Red Room, Vincent van Gogh’s poignant landscapes, and Pablo Picasso’s foundational collages and portraits. All these figures reside together in Wong’s “green room,” understood cheekily in the sense of a place of rest for performers.

Night Crossing, 2018

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 November 2021
Estimated: USD 1,000,000 – 1,500,000
USD 4,860,000

Night Crossing | The Now Evening Auction | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Night Crossing, 2018
Oil on canvas
48×60 inches (122×152 cm)
Signed 王, titled and dated 二0一八 (on the reverse)

Dazzling and emotionally compelling, Night Crossing epitomizes the stark beauty and self-exploration that distinguish Matthew Wong’s remarkable practice. A mesmerizing harmony of stylistic grace, tonal vibrancy, and raw sentiment, Wong weaves a rhapsody of purples and azures into a tranquil, star-studded riverscape, motionless save a single figure, floating in solitude. Reflective of the innate poignancy of his works, Night Crossing is an articulation of Wong’s emotions, and typifies the immediate and intimate resonance of his paintings for his viewers. As the artist explained in 2018: “I would like my paintings to have something in them people across the spectrum can find things they identify with. I do believe that there is inherent loneliness or melancholy to much of contemporary life”. (Maria Vogel, “Matthew Wong Reflects on the Melancholy of Life”, Art of Choice, November 2018 (online)) It is this remarkable emotive quality that distinguishes Wong’s practice within the vaunted bastion of landscape painting, and Night Crossing, as an example of Wong’s Blue Paintings, his final body of work, is a particularly poignant example of his unique aesthetic vernacular.

Working from raw tubes of paint, Wong allows his painterly impulses to carry his hand, drawing arabesques in varying strokes and daubs, eliciting myriad sensations of presence and movement across the canvas. The bespeckled skyline is lifted by a rippling horizon, pulled across the distant plane in striking impastos of blue and black. The vista of swirls and impressions settles upon an idyllic coastal foreground adorned with the petals of a solitary tree – the focal point of this staggeringly intricate, yet serene landscape. Situated within this central point is his omnipresent lone traveler, a stand-in for the viewer in this ineffably nostalgic landscape.

Figure in a Night Landscape, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 8 June 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
HKD 36,550,000 / USD 4,710,112

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempor… Lot 10 June 2021 | Phillips

Figure in a Night Landscape evokes the utter quietude of a forest at midnight, bathed in the ghostly pale light of an incandescent moon that is out of view. Wong is unparalleled in his ability to depict landscapes at a specific moment in time, from daybreak to dawn, and as portrayed here, the middle of the night. The moonlight illuminates the scene, reflecting off the glistening leaves of the spindly network of trees, evocative of the long and thin forms of birch trees that are found clustered together.

Large Paintings

Another Day, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 10,735,000 / USD 974,175

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | Another Day 另一天 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Another Day, 2018
Oil on canvas
183×178 cm (72×70 inches)
Signed and dated 2018 in Chinese, and titled in English on the reverse

Masterfully realized and exuding a wistful charm, Another Day epitomizes the stark beauty of the critically acclaimed, self-taught artist Matthew Wong. A center-piece of Wong’s first solo exhibition at Karma Gallery, New York City, in 2018, Another Day weaves together a rhapsody of color, animating the ethereal worlds of the artist’s mind and conveying the spiritual and ephemeral qualities of natural landscapes.

Wong’s distinctive striped rendering of the sky, an exceedingly rare motif to come to auction, captures the effect of natural light as the sun rises at dawn, the horizontal bands of yellow, pink and midnight blue creating a dazzling visual experience that extends beyond the picture plane. Weaving together a rhapsody of sunlit hues into a tranquil expanse, motionless save a single figure floating inside a hot air balloon, the present work engenders a wavering and rhythmic pulsation which evokes the perceptual sensation of watching the light change at the beginning of the day. Inspiring an intense and fleeting visceral response, Another Day is an extraordinary consolidation and extension of traditional landscape painting, expressing its vivacity by immersing the viewer in the artist’s uniquely poignant imagination.

An intensely evocative painting that recalls Mark Rothko and Bridget Riley’s captivating compositional dynamism and chromatic intensity, Another Day emparts a sheer kaleidoscopic sensorial effect akin to a rising sun. Making use of the tactile medium of oil, Wong drags wide bands of saturated colour across the canvas in thin and thick bands to create a graphic flatness in the sky and ground.

Each strip suggests a horizon by capturing the effects of natural light with varying degrees of separation between shades. Yet the rhythmic staccato of horizontal lines creates a visual cadence which seemingly shifts and bends with every shift of perspective, imparting a sense of roving immensity to the scene. The mossy green of the foreground is contrasted against the cerulean blue of the emerging sun’s rays cascading off the early morning dew, the midnight blue of the rapidly receding night giving way to the radiating bands of encroaching morning light. The narrative quality of Another Day is unique in that the solitary figure traverses not the ground or rivers typical of Wong’s imaginative landscapes, but the sky. Riding a red air balloon, we are captivated by the journey this lone traveler is embarking on, leaving an impression of both esoteric and terrestrial journeys.

The lone figure, a significant motif in Wong’s work that suggests his musings on the loneliness of contemporary life, highlights how “despite their ebullient palette, [Matthew Wong’s paintings] are frequently tinged with a melancholic yearning.” (Eric Sutphin, “Matthew Wong,” Art in America, June 2018 (online)). As John Yau remarked, “In these largely unpopulated paintings, Wong invited the viewer to be a solitary observer or sojourner. He never indicated what awaits us at the end of our journey” (J. Yau, “The Last Works of Matthew Wong,” Hyperallergic, December 2019). This lone figure can be read as a surrogate for the artist working his way through the landscape of art; Wong is at once immersed within the painting and is in dialogue with it. Summoning art historical precedents such as the solitary wanderers of Casper David Freidrich’s Romantic landscapes and the dreamlike qualities of Van Gogh, Another Day is a poignant archetype of Wong’s earnest yet sublimely graceful practice.

Night 1, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 7 November 2023
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 4,164,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Night 1, 2018
Oil on canvas
70×60 inches (177.8 x 152.4 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘NIGHT 1’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

In this large-scale painting, Matthew Wong expands his signature aesthetic to embrace the mysterious beauty similar to that contained within Henri Rousseau’s luscious jungle landscapes. Wong created the present work using a wet-on-wet painting technique, which involves the layering of pigment before it dries. This process requires a fast and light touch, and what results is an enchanting landscape both ethereal and material. The New York Times co-chief art critic Roberta Smith hailed Wong as “one of the most talented painters of his generation” (R. Smith, “A Final Rhapsody in Blue From Matthew Wong,” New York Times, December 24, 2019), and Night 1 epitomizes the prescience of Wong’s unique vision, completed just a year before his untimely passing.

Though Wong did not have formal training in painting, he held a MFA in photography from the City University of Hong Kong. His paintings are coveted not only because of his short six-year oeuvre, but also because of their unparalleled emotional force. In Night 1, there is certainly melancholy, but also peace, as is often the case in Vincent van Gogh’s landscapes. The moon glows with subtle optimism upon a blue and green field. Trees in the distance do not obscure, but rather in the Romantic and Gothic traditions, signal the wistful passage of time. Alternatively, we could see Night 1 as a rendering not of a field, but of seedlings emerging from underground as they are fed by moonlight. The archetypal dark night of the soul could be a contemplative evening walk in nature wherein we can imagine a world that accepts us.

The Golden Age, 2018

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 14,000,000 – 22,000,000
HKD 12,550,000 / USD 1,603,086

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | The Golden Age 黃金時代 | A Long Journey: A Selection from the Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei Collection | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Golden Age, 2018
Oil on canvas
80×65 inches (203.2 x 165.1 cm)
Initialed, titled and dated 2018 on the reverse

Intricately realized and majestic in its luminosity, The Golden Age is a masterful work by the critically acclaimed, self-taught artist Matthew Wong. A center-piece of Wong’s first solo exhibition at Karma in 2018, The Golden Age is the first monochromatic golden-yellow work by the artist to ever come to auction. Weaving together a rhapsody of amber color into a tranquil expanse seen through the space between two cavernous walls, motionless save a single figure, the present work is mystical in its vibrant imaginary landscape. Summoning art historical precedents such as the sweeping brushstrokes of the Impressionists and the intuitive mark-making of Abstract Expressionism, the present work is a mesmerizing harmony of stylistic grace, tonal vibrancy, and raw sentiment. Inspiring an intense and fleeting perceptual sensation before the field of yellow color, The Golden Age is an extraordinary consolidation and extension of traditional landscape painting, expressing its vivacity by immersing the viewer in the artist’s uniquely poignant imagination.

Making use of the tactile medium of oil, Wong makes myriad lines, dots, daubs, and short, lush brushstrokes, eventually arriving at a mystical, post-Impressionist landscape. Working from raw tubes of paint, Wong allows his painterly impulses to carry his hand, drawing arabesques in varying strokes and daubs, eliciting myriad sensations of presence and movement across the canvas. The bespeckled skyline is lifted by a golden horizon, pulled across the distant plane in striking impastos of yellow.  A painterly cartographer, Wong literally feels his way across the landscape, dot by dot, paint stroke by paint stroke, each movement of an instinctual accumulation of color filling the entirety of the yellow landscape. Made using only one color distributed in different values and shades, Wong is able to shift our attention between the dreamlike landscape being depicted and the singular brushstrokes that amass across the canvas. The cobbled brushstrokes and saturated color forms Pointillist patterns on the ground and sky in shades gleamed from the Fauvists between two miraculous swathes of yellow which form the crevice through which this scene is framed.

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 March 2023
Estimated: HKD 24,000,000 – 35,000,000
HKD 36,145,000 / USD 4,604,517

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempor… Lot 8 March 2023 | Phillips

Adored with abandon by the art world since his explosive ascent to auction in 2020, Matthew Wong’s The Road is marked by his virtuosic symphonies of pigment and rejection of tonal modelling in favor of autonomous fields of color. Sharing in the Modernist conviction that the application of oil onto canvas could elicit intimate yet innovative forms of expression, his short career of only 7 years produced works that are lyrical, whimsical, cerebral but most importantly, sincere.

Day 1, 2018

Phillips New-York: 18 May 2022
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 3,176,000

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempora… Lot 30 May 2022 | Phillips

Intimate Paintings

David Hockney, Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011, 2011.
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris. Art © David Hockney

Wong’s paintings frequently revolve around the motif of a journey. In many instances, the destination remains ambiguous, with only a winding path structuring the composition and guiding the viewer forward; in others, as in the present work, the end is clear. Often rendered as a simplified, modest dwelling, the house, set against an expansive, dreamlike terrain, conjures both the promise of warmth and the mystery of the passage required to reach it. Here, a simple, modest house emerges as both focal point and promise, set against an expansive, dreamlike terrain. The interplay between this inviting refuge and the enigmatic landscape that separates it from the viewer evokes both imminent warmth and familiarity, and yet ambiguity and fear for the liminal space between the present and the destination.

Left: Pieter the Elder Bruegel, Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Image © Bridgeman Images.
Right: Peter Doig, Young Bean Farmer, 1991. Private Collection. Art © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS / ARS, NY 2026

In related works such as See You On The Other Side, the destination is across a mysteriously barren expanse, one imbued with a haunting simplicity. There, a lone figure prepares to embark upon the journey. In the present composition, however, that figure is absent. Instead, the viewer is implicitly situated within the scene, assuming the role of traveler and gazing outward along the path ahead, now nearer, more immediate, and inescapable. Now, rather than observing another’s passage, we are compelled to undertake it ourselves. As in life, the conditions of our journey are not of our choosing. Should the sun be setting in the distance, we have but moments before time wanes into dawn. Should it be rising, as winter indeed yields to the morning sunlight, we perhaps are instead looking back and saying goodbye.

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night over the Rhone, 1888. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Image © Bridgeman Images

Following a lifelong battle with autism and depression, Wong tragically took his life at the age of 35. Since then, Wong’s legacy has been cemented, his works entering the permanent collections of vaunted institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and critical and commercial recognition positioning him as a leading voice of our time—a remarkable feat for a self-taught artist.

“I would like my paintings to have something in them people across the spectrum can find things they identify with. I do believe there is inherent loneliness or melancholy to much of contemporary life.” 

A remarkable, chromatic example of this self-taught artist’s masterful painterly execution and deep philosophical sensitivity for both the poetry of landscapes and the melancholic realities of the modern world, Winter’s End pays tribute to Wong’s exceptional ability to create works that provide such tender company and solace to those who see them as he did, while illuminating the emotional undercurrents they so delicately reveal.

Left: Vincent van Gogh, The Sower, 1888. The Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
Right: Paul Gauguin, Landscape, circa 1892. Musée Picasso, Paris. Image: Bridgeman Image

5:22 PM, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 30 September 2025
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 660,400

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019), 5:22 PM | Christie’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
5:22 PM, 2018
Oil on canvas
20×16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
Signed and dated in Chinese and titled ‘5:22 PM’ (on the reverse)

n intimate example by an artist known for his ethereal and vibrant landscapes, Matthew Wong’s 5:22 PM radiates with the beauty and serene nature of a forest cusped by golden hour. The present work is enveloped with dynamic shades of yellow and orange, their warmth bleeding through the curling green and teal strokes which strike and dash into the forms of trees and tall grass. Wong perfectly captures the calming nature yet anticipation of watching the day turn to night – the warmth of the sun slowly fleeting behind the growing cool shadows of the forest. Wong’s serene, vibrant landscapes are the products of the artist’s personal musings and fleeting imaginations.

The occurrences of these memories were primarily sourced from moments of respite throughout his day, the artist explaining that “most of [his] work is done in idle moments when [he is] at home daydreaming, or watching movies and listening to music, drinking coffee or going out on walks that have no destination or purpose in mind” (quoted in M. Vogel, “Matthew Wong Reflects on the Melancholy of Life,” Art of Choice, November 2018). Though borne from a faraway image in the artist’s mind, 5:22 PM possesses an uncanniness to its composition, a familiarity to its emanating glow. The present work is a moment in the day that channels a nostalgic sigh, a turning point between daylight and dusk wholly familiar to us all. The moment when sunlight both peaks and recedes within a moment’s notice, briefly casting a golden hue against the world. Titled down to the minute of the day that Wong finished the painting, 5:22 PM masters the balance of abstraction and familiarity, evoking a universal experience and emotion without a direct referent.

Peter Doig, Reflection (What Does Your Soul Look Like), 1996. © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2025.

Rich with impasto, the small energetic dabs of oil seen throughout the present work provide an dynamic sense of movement inside the expansive, yet intimate forest. It is as if a slight breeze can be felt through the freckled leaves high up within the branches and the blossoms within the luscious meadow in the foreground. The marks, buoyant and varied, range in color and size. Masterfully, Wong loosely groups his brushwork by color and gesture, evoking various planes of space and depth with intuitive mark making. Wong’s ability to generate a foreground, middle ground, and background from these marks suggests a landscape that expands beyond the limitations of the canvas, as if these repetitions and meandering lines exist beyond the painted space.

Claude Monet, Les peupliers, effet blanc et jaune, 1891. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The present work was executed one year prior to the artist’s untimely passing, his career spanning a short, yet extraordinary, six years. It wasn’t until the age of twenty-nine that Wong began his trajectory as a painter, finding solace in his art and taking inspiration from the artists before him. Giants like Vincent van Gogh, Joan Mitchell, Gustav Klimt, and the contemporary Peter Doig would greatly inform his practice, inspiring a visual language within the artist that was simultaneously informed and distinctly unique. Even here, one might see direct visual and artistic references to each of the aforementioned.  The exaggerated, vibrant hues of this sunset call back to the spirit of the Post-Impressionists, who radicalized painting with bold, bright colors and energetic brushstrokes. And now, Wong is among those whom he so greatly admired, achieving an impressive degree of formal mastery and emotional depth within painting which may be felt only in the work of a master. Renowned public collections like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum are but a few institutions to now house works by the artist. The present work is nothing short of this important lineage of painting, capturing the very best of Matthew Wong: gesture, vibrance, emotion, and the surreal.

Into the Night, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 28 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 3,800,000 – 5,500,000
HKD 5,842,000 / USD 750,900

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | Into the Night 長夜行 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Into the Night, 2019
Oil on canvas
41 x 30.5 cm (16 1/8 x 12 inches)
Titled in English, signed and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

Into the Night serves as a poignant testament to the artist’s profound exploration of color and emotion. As a part of his renowned Blue series, this painting holds a special significance within Wong’s oeuvre, with three of the top five auction records from this series highlighting its critical acclaim and market demand. The nocturnal scenes depicted in deep blue hues resonate with audiences, establishing Wong as a vital figure in contemporary art. Fresh to auction, Into the Night marks a significant moment as the first of Wong’s works to be offered in 2025. Given the rarity of his pieces on the market—only six paintings were auctioned in 2024—this latest entry is poised to attract considerable attention. Wong’s artistic journey, though brief, was impactful, and this work represents the culmination of his exploration of night scenes, encapsulating a world of solitude and introspection.

Exhibited in the landmark show The Blue View at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2021, Into the Night was showcased alongside over 40 paintings from Wong’s Blue series, further solidifying its importance within his artistic narrative. This exhibition was the first museum retrospective dedicated to Wong, illuminating his unique vision and the emotional depth of his work. Wong’s brushwork in Into the Night embodies a raw spontaneity that pays tribute to the Romantic tradition. The juxtaposition of smooth, quick strokes of the trees against the geometric pavement evokes a sense of movement and life, while the iconic lone figure at the road’s edge mirrors the vertical streetlights, creating a poignant dialogue between isolation and illumination. This interplay resonates deeply with the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, echoing themes of vulnerability and introspection that defined Wong’s internal state.

Moreover, the painting draws historical comparisons to the works of Van Gogh and Picasso, particularly their explorations of emotional depth and color. In recent years, Wong’s art has gained institutional recognition, including a retrospective at the Dallas Museum of Art and a subsequent exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where his work was presented alongside Van Gogh’s, fostering a conversation between two visionary artists. Into the Night is not merely a painting; it is an invitation to reflect on the nuances of existence and the beauty found in introspective solitude. As it makes its debut at auction, this work promises to captivate collectors and admirers alike, reaffirming Wong’s indelible impact on the art world.

Untitled, 2018

Christie’s New-York: 22 November 2024
Estimated: USD 250,000 – 350,000
USD 315,000

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019), Untitled | Christie’s

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Untitled, 2018
Oil on canvas
20×16 inches (50.8 x 40.6 cm)
Signed in Chinese and titled ‘Untitled’ (on the reverse)

Matthew Wong’s Untitled is a vibrant, intimate landscape from the artist’s later career, a period marked by the artist’s signature, innovative style and meditative essence. Here, Wong achieves a profound degree of depth with the use of sumptuous swaths of ochre, cerulean, verdant green and vermillion. Painted with intentional motions of the hand, a figure is shown in subtle repose, gazing contemplatively out toward the landscape before them. The figure stands with a feeling of resolve, their hands resting on their waist as they ponder the expanse. The lone figures that inhabit Wong’s brilliant realms have been compared to the tiny wanderers in Song Dynasty Chinese landscapes. These figures serve as guides for the eye to engage in the endless paths of these vast landscapes, and here Wong’s figure declaratively introduces the viewer to the absorbing landscape, the depths of meaning and mystery contained within the spirit of Wong’s output. Close inspection reveals that each stroke is an amalgam of pigment, the artist integrating multiple hues on the brush as he marks the canvas. Short, energetic movements comprise the leaves on the trees, while steady, composed gestures downward elicit the flowing quality of water. The artist’s use of negative space is also compelling, as it encourages the viewer to oscillate between the materiality of the composition and the imagination of their inner psyche. Wong paints vignettes of the landscape, just enough to make out the terrain presented to the subject, but abstracted enough to allow the viewer to contemplate the energetic and varied brushwork and palette. This balance of familiarity and abstraction speaks directly to the genius of Wong’s poeticism, employing paint as a wielder of dreams and reality.

Untitled, 2017

Phillips New-York: 19 November 2024
Estimated: USD 1,o00,000 – 1,500,000
USD 1,754,000

Matthew Wong – Modern & Contemporary… Lot 2 November 2024 | Phillips

Matthew Wong’s Untitled, 2017 exemplifies his unique approach to landscape painting, showcasing the artist’s evolving exploration of nature as a space for emotional reflection and solitude. The present work was created during a key year in Wong’s meteoric career, when he gained institutional recognition through the Dallas Museum of Art’s acquisition of a contemporaneous painting titled The West, 2017. Drawing on Modernist traditions and the emotive qualities of Abstract Expressionism, Untitled reveals Wong’s intuitive approach to painting, resulting in a landscape that is both dreamlike and deeply personal.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea, 1871. Tate, London. Image: Tate, London / Art Resource, NY

Lone wanderers frequently appear in Wong’s work, threading their way through serpentine paths and kaleidoscopic rivers in surreal dreamscapes, always journeying but never quite arriving at a final destination. In Untitled, the mysterious journey unfolds along a multicolored waterway flowing inward and upward from lower right. A shadowy figure steers a small boat along the river’s winding path, navigating between dense walls of wild green vegetation on either side. On the left, a dog watches, perhaps partially hidden by the branches of an overhanging tree, its presence unnoticed by the passing boater, who in turn faces away from the viewer. Wong often referred to such figures as “pilgrims,” Lilliputian travelers crossing vast, overwhelming landscapes. In Untitled, Wong depicts a figure “literally surrounded by paint,” immersed in a whirlwind of rhythmically contrasting brushstrokes and colors that highlight its limited perspective, unable to see beyond the tilted horizon.

 “I would like my paintings to have something in them people across the spectrum can find things they identify with. I do believe that there is an inherent loneliness or melancholy to much of contemporary life, and on a broader level I feel my work speaks to this quality in addition to being a reflection of my thoughts, fascinations and impulses.”

Wong’s portrayal of isolation transcends the lone figure, using the landscape as an emotional and psychological mirror. The swirling brushstrokes and textured layering of colors suggest a world both vibrant and suffocating, reflecting the internal overwhelm of loneliness. Wong’s topography blurs the line between the external environment and the inner psyche, where vast, teeming natural spaces symbolize emotional isolation. The verdant greens and turquoise hues of the foliage are punctuated by dappled bursts of color that suggest light filtering through the trees. The figure, dressed in red, stands in stark contrast to the landscape, heightening the sense of disconnection and reinforcing their solitude. In Untitled, the contrast between the figure and their surroundings amplifies the melancholic tone, as the individual, lost in a world that is beautiful yet indifferent, becomes a visual metaphor for the isolation and introspection that permeates much of Wong’s art, a poignant reflection of the quiet loneliness in his life and work.

Peter Doig, White Canoe, 1990/1991. Private Collection. Formerly Saatchi Collection, London.
Artwork: © 2024 Peter Doig/Artsts Rights Society (ARS), New York

In Untitled, Wong’s inclusion of a boat, much like the canoes in Peter Doig’s paintings—often empty or sparsely inhabited and floating in dreamlike, moonlit settings that evoke absence or reflection—serves as a vessel for drifting between states of memory and consciousness. Similarly, the figure in this painting, outlined in a glowing white aura, appears suspended in a transcendent space, reinforcing a sense of detachment from the world. The weeping tree on the left, with its long, drooping branches, enhances the mood of quiet contemplation, while vibrant splashes of light and color suggest life and movement within the stillness. This interplay between serenity and vibrancy is central to Wong’s artistic vision, where the natural world becomes both a physical landscape and an emotional space for introspection. The figure’s solitude, set against this fluid, swirling environment, evokes a drifting state of consciousness, as though they are not merely navigating the landscape but floating through their own inner world, caught between lucid reality and abstract emotion. Wong’s aesthetic combines modernist abstraction with the emotional intensity and intuitive mark-making of Abstract Expressionism, as seen in the crests of impasto across the tactile surface of Untitled, where thick, expressive brushstrokes create a landscape that oscillates between representation and abstraction. His wet-on-wet painting technique—layering pigment before it dries—results in a rich, layered composition that is at once material and ethereal. This process, requiring a fast and light touch, creates a landscape that seems to blur the boundary between reality and dream, much like Henri Rousseau’s jungle scenes of a century prior.

Moonlight Mile, 2017

Sotheby’s London: 9 October 2024
Estimated: GBP 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
GBP 1,563,816 / USD 2, 048,599

Moonlight Mile | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
Moonlight Mile, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
26×58 inches (66 x 147.3 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2017 in Chinese (on the reverse)

Dazzling, emotionally compelling, and executed in an exquisitely rendered melancholy veil of blue, Moonlight Mile from 2017 epitomizes the stark beauty and self-exploration that distinguishes Matthew Wong’s remarkable oeuvre. A mesmerizing harmony of stylistic grace, tonal vibrancy, and raw sentiment, Wong weaves a rhapsody of cobalts and azures into a tranquil, star-studded topography, motionless save one figure trekking his dreamscape. Reflective of the innate poignancy of his works, Moonlight Mile is an articulation of Wong’s emotions, and typifies the immediate and intimate resonance of his paintings.

“I would like my paintings to have something in them people across the spectrum can find things they identify with. I do believe that there is inherent loneliness or melancholy to much of contemporary life.”

It is this remarkable emotive quality that distinguishes Wong’s practice within the vaunted bastion of landscape painting. Herein, Moonlight Mile – exemplifying Wong’s Blue Paintings, which the artist worked on from 2017 until his untimely passing in 2019 at the age of thirty five – is a particularly poignant example of the artist’s emotive aesthetic talent.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889. Museum of Modern Art , New York. Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

Working directly from tubes of paint, Wong would allow creative impulses to carry his hand, drawing arabesques in varying strokes and daubs which elicit myriad sensations of presence and movement across the canvas. The bespeckled skyline is disrupted by striking mountains rendered in impastoes of blue, purple, metallic silver, and black. Situated within this central point is his omnipresent lone traveller, cipher or a stand-in for the viewer in this ineffably poignant and engulfing landscape. A pictorial device developed by Caspar David Friedrich in his canonically poignant Romantic landscapes, this lone figure seen from the back (coined the rückenfigur) offers a vehicle to convey an intimation of our insignificance and vulnerability when confronted with sublime, awesome expanse and power of nature. Redolent of the visual lyricism of Vincent van Gogh, the sensuousness of Gustave Klimt, the emotively potent Pablo Picasso, and the Romantic tradition of Friedrich, Midnight Mile synthesizes endless references and articulates an enchantingly vulnerable, immersive, and acutely alluring image rich in chromatic, spatial, and psychological complexities.

This painting offers an extraordinary consolidation and extension of a long tradition of landscape painting by crafting a menagerie of dreamscapes of unfathomable breadth and anchoring them all to the bittersweet pas seul of existence. Moonlight Mile is a tender, enchanting composition that meditates on the liminal space between the fantastical and the real.

The Recluse, 2017

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 20 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,000,000 – 2,000,000
HKD 5,499,000 / USD 708,533

Matthew Wong 王俊傑 | The Recluse 隱居者 | Contemporary Art Day Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Recluse, 2017
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed, initialed and dated 2017 on the reverse

Dated 2017, The Recluse was completed a year before Matthew Wong’s widely acclaimed solo debut at the Karma Gallery in New York. It was from then on that his early career was quickly met with a meteoric rise. Monita, the artist’s mother, once expressed her concern regarding Wong’s rapid success, wondered “as though he had ascended a mountain…whether he needed time to catch his breath.” (Jana G. Pruden, “‘He was just starting’: The exceptional life and artistic legacy of Matthew Wong”, The Globe and Mail, December 2019)

Appearing to have materialized from Monita’s reflection on her son, The Recluse presents a seated figure resting in the middle of a hike in the foreground. This solitary protagonist, often seen in Wong’s mostly uninhabited landscapes, sits cross-legged as if meditating in the lonesome wilderness, echoing the work’s title. The individual could be the artist himself, snuggled in a calm spot of refuge, that life raft described by the artist Paul Behnke that Wong found in painting which kept him mentally afloat in the face of the inherent loneliness of contemporary life. Viewers are presented with not only a landscape but a mindscape from one of Wong’s idle moments.

May that be a segment of his daydreams, a flash of imagery from a movie, or sceneries captured during his strolls around Edmonton, those were the moments when Wong saw and felt the world most intensely, which later fueled his paint and brush as he intuitively elaborated glimpses of thoughts in his studio. Never planned or drafted out his compositions, Wong allowed his instincts to inform his creative process. His spontaneity raw from the tubes of oil paint, dabs of impasto oozed from the flanking fields leading up the hills exuberantly lit by the setting sun. Their chromatic vibrancy brings forth the saturated palettes of Paul Gauguin’s lush depictions of southern France. The vegetation in an engulfing abundance tremble with the vitality under Wong’s thick applications, recalling those by Vincent van Gogh whose distinctive painterly style Wong is often compared to.

LEFT: PAUL GAUGUIN, LANDSCAPE AT ARLES, 1888, OIL ON CANVAS, NATIONALMUSEUM, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN; TOP RIGHT: VINCENT VAN GOGH, THE MULBERRY TREE, 1889, OIL ON CANVAS, NORTON SIMON ART FOUNDATION, CALIFORNIA; BOTTOM RIGHT: VINCENT VAN GOGH, WHEAT FIELDS WITH REAPER AT SUNRISE, 1889, OIL ON CANVAS, VAN GOGH MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

Despite the stylistic resemblance, the post-impressionist master’s frantic fury and psychological turmoil are nowhere to be found in Wong’s brushstrokes. While the splaying foliage and twisting branches of Wong’s tree in The Recluse bear resonance to van Gogh’s Mulberry Tree (1889), its trunk sways to one side and makes way for the enveloping presence of the vertically rising slopes. Hovering above all is the watchful sun, emanating nourishing light, stillness, and tranquility. Subtly evoking the delicate kinship between a living individual and the natural world, a notion fundamental to Wong’s oeuvre, the pensive figure under the omnibenevolent tree grounds the fantastical landscape and enables viewers to experience Wong’s soft but passionate rhapsody.

Blue Tree, 2016

Phillips New-York: 15 November 2023
Estimated: USD 400,000 – 600,000
USD 431,800

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 324 November 2023 | Phillips

Dominated by an alluring cadmium red, the landscape in Matthew Wong’s Blue Tree, 2016, verges on the surrealist, featuring only a towering cherry blossom tree in full bloom. A cathedral top door reminiscent of monumental stone buildings frames the enigmatic composition, which opens to an otherworldly space that lies beyond its threshold. The present example comes to auction on the heels of the artist’s acclaimed exhibition Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances, currently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and previously at the Dallas Museum of Art. In the years following Wong’s untimely death in 2019, his work has steadily garnered market and institutional recognition. In addition to the show at the MFA, his work is currently on view alongside that of Milton Resnick, who was an important influence on Wong, at the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, New York. Both exhibitions are accompanied by important new monographs of the artist’s work.

Blue Tree highlights the astute sensitivity of Wong to his surroundings. The humble composition evokes an interior retreat, looking out at the world from within an enclosed chapel. The aperture of the doorway is a recurrent motif in Wong’s oeuvre, which includes abundant framing devices like doorways, windows, and even openings within foliage. These portals became even more frequent in the later years of his career as his works become focused on solitary, quiet reflections on his surroundings. The present example, painted before Wong shifted to a blue-dominated palette, highlights a bright cherry blossom swaying beyond the archway, a bright beacon that spotlights the delicate impasto brushwork for which Wong is known.

Vincent van Gogh, Almond Blossom, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, February 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Image: Art Resource, NY 

The unexpected title, Blue Tree, draws attention to the smallest detail: the bright splashes of azure and cobalt emerging through the dense layers of the tree’s trunk and limbs. The inventive combinations of chartreuse, gold, and red build upon the blue pigment with Fauvist-inspired technique. The influence of artists like André Derain and Henri Matisse and Post-Impressionists like Vincent van Gogh are felt through Wong’s imaginative color choices and loose rendering of flora. The present example recalls van Gogh’s Almond Blossom, 1890, with its delicate, pale pink blossoms atop unfurling branches. The blossoms used across both works flower in early spring symbolize new life. Wong’s bold use of red shares the compelling effect of Matisse’s red masterpieces, The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908 and The Red Studio, 1911.

The Jungle, 2017

Sotheby’s New-York: 18 May 2023
Estimated: USD 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
USD 1,754,000

The Jungle | The Now Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Jungle, 2017
Oil on canvas
30×40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Signed, titled and dated 2017 (on the reverse)

Shimmering with an array of lustrous chromatic dashes and dabs, The Jungle by Matthew Wong presents a mystical nightscape featuring the artist’s signature lone figure, sailing dreamily across a cascading river. Executed in 2017, The Jungle is an early example of Wong’s celebrated moonlit landscapes, a genre to which he later dedicated his solo show, Blue at Karma Gallery, New York, which opened posthumously in 2019-2020. The solitary, faceless figure is a recurring and significant motif found in Wong’s mature paintings: often interpreted as a surrogate for the artist himself, the lone figure typically wanders winding paths across rolling hills or navigated interminable bodies of water in small row boats, as in the present work. Above this figure, Wong’s bulbous trees line the top edge of the water’s bank, extending beyond the confines of the canvas to suggest a continuous narrative. Intriguing and impactful, The Jungle revels in the artist’s idiosyncratic visual language of texture and color as he evokes in his impasto landscape an inner loneliness and a profound sense of isolation and longing.

Wong’s virtuosic handling of paint in The Jungle draws the viewer into his prismatic nightscape as dots, wiggles, and strokes coalesce with feeling in a somber yet meditatively lustrous symphony. Above a central body of water, Wong conceives a dense jungle of chromatic trees and patches of smaller, thickly applied brushwork that suggests the image of fallen leaves on the jungle floor. The wind seems to whistle through the tress in effervescent speckles of evergreens and oranges, harmonizing with the deep blues and blacks of the nightscape. With his impasto technique, Wong conjures the nocturne rhapsody of the jungle landscape that is interrupted by nothing other than a lone pilgrim clad in red, drifting slowly in his canoe. The pensive figure faces the surrounding wilderness of the jungle, emphasizing the grandeur of the fantastical natural landscape while embodying a stand-in for the viewer.

First Snow, 2018

Phillips New-York: 16 May 2023
Estimated: USD 120,000 – 180,000
USD 609,600

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempor… Lot 301 May 2023 | Phillips

Phillips Hong-Kong: 31 March 2023
Estimated: HKD 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
HKD 3,810,000 / USD 485,357

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contemp… Lot 114 March 2023 | Phillips

Fresh to the market, The Painter captivates with a symphony of texture and rich, warm color, conjuring a dreamlike landscape of dense rocks, curling brambles and trees. A red sky ablaze with the fire of a setting sun bursts out from a gap in the terrain toward the midpoint of the composition, through jagged framing that mimics the form of a crown. Pouring out from beneath this window is a dappled yellow and green road, which cascades out like oozing honey or hot lava toward the lower right corner, where the titular painter stands. As twilight approaches, the solitary figure raises their paintbrush to delicate details of a brown flower and sun, indicating this is the composition they are working on.

Pink Wave, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 22 June 2022
Estimated: HKD 16,000,000 – 26,000,000
HKD 22,635,000 / USD 2,883,549

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempor… Lot 11 June 2022 | Phillips

The Edge, 2019

Sotheby’s New-York: 20 May 2022
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 2,107,000

The Edge | Contemporary Day Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984 – 2019)
The Edge, 2019
Oil on canvas
30×40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm)
Signed 王, titled and dated 二0九 (on the reverse)

Utterly iridescent and intricately layered, The Edge by Matthew Wong is one of the very last works created by the artist and was sold on the same day of his untimely death in 2019. Striking with its rhythmic cadence of dense brushwork, stylistic precision and tonal vibrancy, The Edge is typical of the artist’s most captivating and meditative dreamscapes. Entirely instinctual in its execution, The Edge is reflective of Wong’s ingeniously improvised technique of painting without preliminary sketching, underscoring the innate and unbridled talent of this entirely self-taught artist. Although the composition hinges upon spontaneity, the heavily worked surface signals a distinct intentionality and rumination, thus elevating The Edge above other examples by the artist. The selection of The Edge for the upcoming retrospective, Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances, at the Dallas Museum of Art in 2022-2023 reinforces its universal allure.

The lush green vegetation in The Edge cocoons the single, motionless figure, who gazes over the serenely still water behind, shimmering in the glow of dusk. The swirl of dense foliage not only creates an alluring and rich texture, it acts as a framing device for the solitary figure. The enclosed nature of the hedge and almost aerial perspective over the figure, shifts the relationship of the viewer to one of voyeurism. Indeed, the figure teetering at the shore of the lake in The Edge, suggests that we, as the viewer, are observing a private moment of profound reflection and reckoning. The emotional reverberations in this idyllic vista are poignantly haunting, given the prescient timing of the completion of this work just before the artist’s passing. The undertone of the brushwork in The Edge is laden with a complex and arresting sense of intimacy and artistic authenticity, as the artist ponders his own life. Having remained in the same private collection since it was acquired from Wong’s first significant champion, Karma, The Edge is entirely fresh to market. Enchantingly vulnerable, The Edge is a rarefied treasure that captures Matthew Wong’s final strokes of brilliance and the very essence of the solitary artist, reflecting on his profound and ultimate thoughts, fascinations and impulses.

Arcadia, 2017

Christie’s London: 1 March 2022
Estimated: GBP 250,000 – 350,000
GBP 604,800 / USD 805,433

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Arcadia, 2017
Oil on canvas
24×20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)
Signed in Chinese, titled ‘ARCADIA’ and dated in Chinese (on the reverse)

Matthew Wong’s Arcadia (2017) conjures a vibrant, dreamlike landscape in a sparkling patchwork of colour. Rendered on a jewel-like scale, its saturated palette and intricate, offbeat composition exemplify the work of the artist. Wong, who lived and worked between Canada and Hong Kong, was self-taught, and used his art to conjure contemplative, richly enigmatic spaces. Here, a small nude figure stands amid a wildflower meadow of vivid hues. Van Gogh-esque dabs of purple, yellow, green, orange and blue blossom before a ground of warm yellow ochre, filling the picture like an impasto mosaic. A slender, red-leaved tree bends towards the figure, who leans forward attentively: the two appear to be engaged in conversation. Via this deep visual learning—intense Fauvist colors, spangled Pointillism, Hockney’s soaring post-cubist landscapes and the bold patterns of Matisse, Klimt and Kusama alike echo in his work—Wong developed his own singular, deceptively straightforward style. Wong worked intuitively and without preparatory drawing, passing the brush between both hands as he brought his imagined scenery to the surface. As with many of his paintings, Arcadia is animated by vertiginous warps in distance and tone. Its zones of colur flex uncannily between positive and negative space, scintillating pattern and pictorial description, plunging us into a brilliant and disorienting realm. The lone figures that people Wong’s pictures have been compared to the tiny wanderers in Song Dynasty Chinese landscapes, whose paths viewers can follow into the picture to explore the vastness of creation. This absorbing experience of landscape might equally be seen to express Wong’s sense of journeying into art history, new painterly horizons unfolding around him as he studies his craft. The wistful, visionary quality of the present work speaks to an image of art as revelation: like a garden of Eden, it seems an environment alive with meaning and mystery, inviting us into a potential world beyond our own.

Yellow Brick Road, 2018

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 12,000,000 – 18,000,000
HKD 29,050,000 / USD 3,728,469

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
Yellow Brick Road, 2018
Oil on canvas
40 1/4 x 30 1/8 inches (102.2 x 76.6 cm)
Signed and dated in Chinese, titled ‘YELLOW BRICK ROAD’ (on the reverse)

A long yellow brick road stretches out across an expansive landscape tinted by nocturnal midnight blues. In the foreground, a lone figure can be observed making their way towards the horizon line. In the distance, the night sky is midnight blue and accented with bright yellows and earthy green brushstrokes. This mysterious journey is instantly alluring, yet tinged with a forlorn yearning that leaves one feeling wide open. Painted within the final years of Wong’s prolific, yet short-lived career, Yellow Brick Road is a poetic work signaling the artist’s mature artistic output. The title pays homage to Lyman Frank Baum’s classic children’s novel, The Wizard of Oz, wherein the fictional yellow brick road is portrayed as a metaphor for the course of action that an individual takes because they believe it will lead to good things. Wong creates an imagined landscape out of this age-old metaphor and turns it into a luscious, dreamy landscape reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh’s night paintings created during the last two years of his life in Arles and Saint-Rémy. Yellow Brick Road is the perfect harmony between Wong’s earlier works featuring sunlit terrains and pasture greens with his later works featuring nocturnal scenes and midnight blues. The relationship between dreams and reality, observation and imagination, life and death, are incredibly vivid and potent during this final stage of Wong’s oeuvre. Yellow Brick Road is the embodiment of such poetic sentiment and echoes van Gogh’s yearning for the night. Yellow Brick Road is the culmination of Wong’s intense examination of form and color through internalizing lessons learned from the great artists that preceded him.

Far Away Eyes, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 8,000,000 – 12,000,000
HKD 21,183,000 / USD 2,716,849

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 15 November 2021 | Phillips

Hypnotic and riveting, Far Away Eyes by Matthew Wong captures the chromatic vibrance, compositional complexity, and emotional depth that characterizes the artist’s unique painterly sensitivity. A lone figure, cloaked in gold, stands beneath a single tree, quietly contemplating a sweeping glittering vista of mountain and sky. Slightly off-center, the solitary tree is imbued with a poignant anthropomorphic quality, its trunk leaning towards a setting sun. The landscape is bathed in incandescent Fauvist hues, while the flattened perspective defies laws of gravity and space, drawing viewers into the depths of memory, imagination, and longing.

Intermixing Western and Eastern art historical influences, Wong developed a singular aesthetic that has redefined the genre of landscape, winning the praise of the esteemed The New York Times critic Roberta Smith, who declared him ‘one of the most talented painters of his generation.’ⁱ Evoking the scintillating scenes of Gustav Klimt, the expressionist power of Edvard Munch, the dream-like serenity of Peter Doig, as well as the minimalistic poise of traditional Chinese scrolls, Far Away Eyes evokes notions of introspection, meditation, and the search for meaning. It serves as an exquisite example of Wong’s mission and visual language and a moving testament to his uniquely delicate mind.

Nature’s Church, 2017

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2021
Estimated: HKD 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
HKD 9,204,000 / USD 1,180,469

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 14 November 2021 | Phillips

Most often critically associated to the art and life of Vincent van Gogh, Wong’s Nature’s Church indeed brings to mind the starry skies and swirling, tactile brushstrokes of his predecessor – in particular, van Gogh’s night paintings created during the final two years of his life which, in a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh described as being ‘much more alive and richly colored than the day.’ A belief also held by James Abott McNeill Whistler, as exemplified by his twilight nocturne paintings, Wong too, evokes the celestial quietude of night in the present work. Night-time, for Wong, was a key time to explore the depths of his mind as ‘following the natural path of [his] imagination or watching films in the dark of [his] living room [was] an activity… [he] pursue[d] every night without fail’, explaining ‘it’s inevitable the solitary nature of this pattern seeps into and informs his work.’

Time After Time, 2018

Phillips London: 17 November 2021
Estimated: USD 800,000 – 1,200,000
USD 1,482,000

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Conte… Lot 20 November 2021 | Phillips

Painted in 2018, Time After Time is a stunning example of Matthew Wong’s interior scenes. Taking its place within the legacy of interior paintings by the Post-Impressionists and Fauvists, the present work demonstrates the artist’s unique sensibility to the genre. Showcasing some of Wong’s most prominent motifs—the table with a bowl of fruit, the flowering tree in a dreamlike, Milton Avery-esque landscape—into a single composition, the work invites viewers directly into the pictorial space, where a door opens to a glimmering room with a pendulum clock. Coalescing interior and exterior, past and present, Time After Time captures the technical and conceptual themes of Wong’s mature works that have bolstered him into widespread critical acclaim.

The Reader, 2017

Phillips New-York: 23 June 2021
Estimated: USD 600,000 – 800,000
USD 2,329,000

Matthew Wong – 20th Century & Contempora… Lot 5 June 2021 | Phillips

Embodying Matthew Wong’s leitmotif of the solitary figure in a fantastical environment, The Reader, 2017 presents a seated figure absorbing a book under a tree in bloom reminiscent of Gustav Klimt’s The Park. Dominating two-thirds of the composition, the unified canopy of multifarious trunks reflects Wong’s engagement with both Western and Eastern art in its evocation of the mark-making Pointillism of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, the impasto whips of Vincent van Gogh, and the hallucinatory optical power of Chinese lacquerware. Protruding from the canvas like glimmering pebble-sized gems in its brilliant hues, the thick and varied application of paint evinces the fullness of the lush canopy in its rich materiality while calling attention to Wong’s unreserved painterly handling. Oscillating between the real and imaginary, mind and matter, The Reader draws the viewer into the artist’s intimate mindscapes.

Embodying the alienating loneliness of modern life, the isolated reader in the park encapsulates the transcription of Wong’s secluding disposition under his painterly hand.

“Living a fairly reclusive life and finding the most stimulation and enjoyment from matters of the mind…it’s inevitable that the solitary nature of this pattern seeps into and informs my work.”

In the present work, the book represents the portal through which the artist nurtured his creative mind and built his “little rhapsodies of the everyday.” This allusion is strikingly reflected in the canopy of the tree just above the figure, its austere rectangular form visually recalling a painted canvas supported by an easel. Showcasing a painting within a painting, The Reader invites us into a layered picture of Wong’s poetic, imaginary worlds, transforming the everyday into the fantastical.

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 24 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 6,800,000 – 8,800,000
HKD 30,250,000 / USD 3,895,635

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019) (christies.com)

MATTHEW WONG (1984-2019)
NIGHT 2, 2018
Oil on canvas
60×60 inches (152.5 x 152.5 cm)
Signed and dated in Chinese, titled ‘NIGHT 2 (on the reverse)

A long winding road stretches out across an expansive landscape tinted by nocturnal midnight blues. In the foreground, a lone tree stands tall, facing a labyrinth of foliage. In the distance, the night sky is clear with a single cloud idly drifting by. This mysterious journey is instantly alluring, yet tinged with a forlorn yearning that leaves one feeling wide open. Painted within the final years of Wong’s prolific, yet short-lived artistic career, Night 2 is the final stanza of an epic poem.

The Beginning, 2017

Left: Claude Monet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Picnic), C.1865-1866, oil on canvas, Pushkin Museum, Moscow. © 2021 Image: Scala, Florence.
Right: Paul Signac, St Tropez, the Custom’s Path, 1905, oil on canvas, Musee de Grenoble, France. Image: Bridgeman Images.

Recalling the work of masters such as Vincent van Gogh and Yayoi Kusama, Wong’s Two Women is an entrancing manifestation of his unique visual language. While the painting’s formal style bears evident iconographic references to movements including Fauvism, Pointillism and Impressionism —one is notably reminded of Claude Monet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe— the nostalgic overtone washing over its subject matter is specifically reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s forlorn compositions, dominated by notions of loneliness and angst rather than commanded by individuated human silhouettes. Looking at Avenue Under the Snow, one has a comparable sentiment of liminal detachment, produced by the intersection of natural events —the snow’s layered coatings— and human presence, overall carried by an overarching sense of silence. Though the eponymous two women in the present painting bear no explicit nostalgic features—no facial frowns, no signs of wistfulness— their smallness in comparison to the magnitude of the nature that surrounds them compels a broader, more existential questioning on human life. It is their simultaneous presence and absence from the tableau that highlight the distinctly Munch-ian mood that is at play.

A hypnotic synthesis of styles and vibrant hues, The River exemplifies the melancholic beauty and ethereal compositions that distinguish Matthew Wong’s remarkable oeuvre. Drawing upon masterpieces of the art historical canon and combining the dreamlike qualities of Georges Seurat and Vincent Van Gogh’s landscapes, Wong creates an entirely unique artistic vernacular that relies on an idiosyncratic handling of paint. Wong’s impastoed, painterly style is indebted to the nineteenth-century technique of pointillism championed by Neo-Impressionist painters Seurat, Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro.

On the surface of the present work, fiery hues of red and cobalt coalesce in a composition that is at once abstract and figurative. From a distance, the impastoed blue brushstrokes form the vertical outline of a river as if seen from above. While Wong’s landscapes remain amorphous and abstracted, he often includes a single figure in the composition, minute compared to their expansive surrounding environment. In the present work, the figure is rendered with just a few quick brushstrokes, one arm outstretched as if caught in the act of swimming upstream. The sole figure at the top of the composition is juxtaposed against a deep green circular form towards the bottom, perhaps a small island in the riverbed, or a reflection of the moon. The emotional, chromatic and spatial complexities of the present work, populated by a solitary figure, inspire introspective reflection, the canvas seemingly encapsulating a surreal collective subconscious. In its nuanced balance between figure and nature, The River also recalls the radical sublimity of Caspar David Friedrich’s romantic landscapes, which often show a single figure profoundly regarding and reflecting upon the magnitude of nature.

VINCENT VAN GOGH, THE RED VINEYARD, 1888 / PUSHKIN MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, MOSCOW, RUSSIA
IMAGE: © 2021 SCALA, FLORENCE

Executed in 2018, only one year before the artist’s death at the young age of 35, the present work is an exquisite example of the profoundly vulnerable, hypnotic representation of the subconscious that characterizes Wong’s too brief and extraordinarily poignant oeuvre. Juxtaposing the vast expanses of blue and cadmium that appear to transcend the border of the canvas, the solitary recognizable human figure on the surface of The River enables the viewer to experience the picture directly, grounding the fantastical landscape in something universally relatable. Captivating in its exquisite serenity, the present work exemplifies the very best of Wong’s highly celebrated practice, balancing between reality and the subconscious, fantasy and the figurative, while demonstrating the artist’s remarkable contribution to the storied tradition of landscape painting. 

Luminous Night, 2017

Lotus, 2017