Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Qi Baishi
Painter and seal carver, a carpenter by training, who settled in Beijing in 1917 and became known for freehand flowers, birds, shrimps, crabs and insects and for his seals.
Mural of the event “Renewal of Ink Painting”, which this person took part in.
In the late Qing and early Republic Western painting and modern art schooling reached China, and the debate over whether Chinese painting needed reform grew heated. In 1919 Qi Baishi left Hunan to settle in Beijing, where he sold paintings in Liulichang but at first struggled to make his way. His friend Chen Shizeng urged him not to follow his predecessors; Qi changed his style and created his bold red-flower, ink-leaf manner, and Chen took his work to a joint Chinese-Japanese painting exhibition in Japan, where all of it sold. In 1928 Lin Fengmian founded the National Academy of Art at Luo Garden by West Lake in Hangzhou, and that autumn Xu Beihong, heading the art college in Beiping, engaged Qi as a professor.
Also known as Original name Qi Chunzhi · Qi Huang · Zi Weiqing · Hao Baishi Shanren
Qi Baishi, born Qi Chunzhi and later named Huang, with the courtesy name Weiqing and the sobriquet Baishi Shanren, was born in 1864 in Xiangtan, Hunan. Apprenticed as a decorative woodcarver in his teens, he took up poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal carving in his twenties and later studied with Wang Kaiyun. Around the age of forty he made several long journeys. From 1917 he lived in Beijing, selling paintings and seals; under Chen Shizeng's influence he changed his style, working in bold red-flower, black-leaf freehand painting and painting shrimps, crabs and insects. In 1922 Chen took his work to an exhibition in Tokyo. From 1929 he taught at the Jinghua Art School. His writings include the poetry collection Baishi Shicao, and late in life he painted Frogs Croaking Ten Li Down the Mountain Stream. He died in Beijing in September 1957.
Life and times
Dates 1864–1957
- 1919Renewal of Ink PaintingTook partage 55
- 1922Qi Baishi's Paintings Shown in Tokyoage 58
- 1928Xu Beihong Hires Qi Baishiage 64