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Fu Baoshi and his wife Luo Shihui had
a picture taken at their home in Naning in 1947.
| Credited with revolutionizing Chinese ink
painting, Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) is considered one of the most important Chinese
artists of the last century. From an apprentice in a painting shop to an
art-history student in Japan, and later an diligent artist who traveled all over
China to capture the country's landscape, forming his own style based on
traditional artistry, Fu Baoshi continued his quest for artistic adventure
throughout his life.
Fu Baoshi was born in Xinyu, Jiangxi
Province. He went to Japan to study the History of Oriental Art in the Tokyo
School of Fine Arts in 1933. He settled in Nanjing
after he returned to China and was recruited by Xu
Beihong to teach art history and painting at the National Central
University. He translated many books from Japanese and carried out his own
research. In painting itself, he brought Japanese visual elements to the Chinese
ink painting tradition.
Fu had strong feelings towards the land of China. During his travel to many
places, he recorded the splendors of the rivers and mountains, drawing
inspiration from nature and becoming the representative landscape painter of his
time. His name will be remembered forever for his depictions of Chinese
landscapes.
Fu wrote numerous fine arts theses, the earliest of which, "On the Evolution
of Chinese Paintings", was written at the age of 25. He also
carried out in-depth research into the history of landscape
painting at the end of the 4th century BC, including the works of Gu
Kaizhi of the Eastern
Jin Dynasty (317-420), Zhan Ziqian of the Sui
Dynasty (581-618) and Jing Hao of the Five
Dynasties Period (907-960), as well as Wu Douzi, Li Sixu, Li Zhaodao and
Zhang Yanyuan of the Tang
Dynasty (618-907). He worked very hard to imitate paintings by Gao Kegong
and Ni Zan of the Yuan
Dynasty (1271-1368) Chen Hongshou of the Ming
Dynasty (1368-1644), and Cheng Sui, Kun Can, Zha Shibiao, Gong Xian, Mei
Qing, Wui Li, Yun Shouping and Shi Tao of the Qing
Dynasty (1644-1911), finally becoming one of the master painters of his
ageIn this capacity he succeeded Huang Binhong, who had created a new style of
landscape painting called "Baoshi wrinkle" basing on the cattle-hair wrinkle of
Wang Meng of the Yuan Dynasty.
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