Today is the birthday of painter Xu Beihong (徐悲鸿), born this date in Yixing, Jiangsu in 1895. Xu studied painting in Shanghai until at the age of 22 he was hired by Cai Yuanpei to teach at Peking University. After a two-year stint at the university, Xu traveled to France where he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and later wandered around Europe, drawing and painting. He returned to China in 1927 teaching at several universities and academies and then organizing one of the first major overseas shows for contemporary Chinese painters which traveled to France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. During World War II, Xu organized another show in Singapore; the proceeds the show going to aid those suffering as a result of the Japanese invasion. After the founding of the PRC, Xu was named as the first president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Xu’s paintings were immensely popular abroad, especially among the Nanyang Chinese community in Southeast Asia.
He died of a stroke in 1953 at his home in Beijing.
Also on this date in 1864, Zeng Guoquan (曾国荃), the brother of late-Qing überofficial Zeng Guofan (曾国藩), ordered his engineers to blow a section of the wall surrounding the Taiping capital, Tianjing (Nanjing). As the wall collapsed, the Zeng brothers’ Hunan “Xiang” Army flooded into the city. The Taiping offered stiff resistance in pockets, but the city, besieged for months, swiftly descended into complete chaos, as Taiping officials and commoners alike began committing suicide or panicking in a mad dash for their lives. The Qing troops, frustrated by the long siege, unleashed their anger on the city and its peoples. Fires broke out as soldiers looted homes and businesses. Disciplined troop movements broke down almost immediately into bloody street-to-street and house-to-house fighting. As the Taiping military threw off their uniforms to flee or to confuse their attackers, Qing soliders started killing indiscriminately. At least 20,000 people died in the retaking of the city.
Love the Historical Record posts! I’m so pleased to see a little bit of art history make it onto the record. But I would also add in just how big a role he played in the debates surrounding guohua, and what the new “Chinese painting” should be. Chinese art history of the twentieth century swirls around the fluctuating definition of national painting, an issue that parallels, reflects and impacts the political and social changes of the time.
Kiki,
Thanks, always great to have you comment. You know, after I finished the post I realized I didn’t say a whole lot about Xu as an artist and that’s my bad. Part of it is that I have a limited background in art history and so would be in a bit over my shoulders in such a discussion, I’m glad you filled the gap.
Thanks for stopping by.
It’s been so quiet here at the Studio this week– hope you are hanging in there.
I– too– like Xu Beihong– I love his horse paitings and think he may be unique for his modern commitment to what is a very old genre?
(NHK Silkroad (part 1) 天馬行空)
The artist was not included in this book (a textbook actually) but its a book I like very much called _The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art_ by respected and prolific Michael Sullivan. I think you would especially be interested in Chapter Three (China and European Art) It is all basic stuff but the conclusion was well done I thought.
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/4735.php
PS: The more I think about it, the stranger it seems to me that he wasn’t included in Sullivan’s book. As Kiki said, Xu was instrumental in the debates surrounding what Chinese painting was to be (how much western and or japanese elements should be taken up into traditional painting practices)– even the horse painting you chose up top is representative of this blending of very old (tang painting) conventions and themes with Western techniques.
Over and out.
Peony,
I confess to being an art and art history novice. I’m very much in the “I know what I like…” camp. But I’ve been looking to expand my horizons for some time now, thanks for the reading recommendations, I’ll be sure to check them out.
Well, I guess that is better than my mom. Whenever we visit museums in Tokyo or Taipei and HK, she judges art with, “No, that wouldn’t look good in the living room;” or, “I wouldn’t hang that on my walls…”
The book actually is interesting in a historical context– as part of the overall interaction between the 2 civilizations. I don’t know exactly what your thesis is on, but I have found art a really interesting place to see how cultures interact.