Peony Painting

I have a print of a peony Qi Baishi and I can see the pattern of dots in the picture, but the signature, Chinese calligraphy, do not show the dot pattern, but looks like ink - even hair brush left in ink.I wonder if it is possible the artist signed the print media? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

This is common with quality prints. A regular press run high volume with a real signature could be considered an image of "dedicated" rather than a print "signed by the artist.". The value of this print is much less and the autograph is more valuable than the print itself. In cases where the highest quality prints are produced in limited editions, printing is considered a level of art collectors.

Yes you can. Reproduced prints are generally the number of printing followed by the number of prints made. It will look like this: 72/500 This means that it is the 72nd printing a series of 500 prints of the painting.