A vibrant composition

Renowned for his portraits of animals and famous personalities, Yan Pei-Ming honours the Year of the Rabbit with a monumental painting, depicting the rabbit, and all the 12 animals of the zodiac.

The allegory is one of togetherness in diversity. The work’s true subject, the artist notes, is not one animal or another, or even the cognac itself. Instead, Yan Pei-Ming focused on capturing light. “When you hold a bottle of cognac up to sunlight, its hues and transparency vary so much. I wanted to portray cognac — but it’s light that is really the colour of this painting,” the artist says.

His artwork, “The Great Race”, a vibrant composition shows the zodiac bestiary galloping in unison, evoking a message of freedom, inclusion, and interconnectedness. For the first time in his remarkable career, the Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming ventures into a new palette: cognac’s amber, orange, russet and burgundy tones take pride of place in a composition that nods to the many eaux-de-vie and hues present in the Hennessy cognac. The artist’s signature broad, sweeping brushstrokes impart a sense of universality, immediacy, and adventure.