A catalogue of the Ashmolean collection of Chinese paintings by Shelagh Vainker (published Oxford, 2000).
Li Keran was born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province. He attended school in Shanghai, graduating in 1925, and later studied at the National Academy of Art in Hangzhou where his courses included sketching and oil painting. He spent some time in Sichuan province during the Sino-Japanese War, and in 1947 went to Beijing. He spent ten years as a pupil of Qi Baishi and Huang Binhong, the great masters of traditional painting. He himself taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He had a successful career as an artist until the Cultural Revolution, and painted again from the late 1970s until his death a decade later.
The landscape of the Wu Gorges was one of the artist’s favourite subjects in the 1960s, when he was not entirely satisfied with the contemporary trend of socialist realism in landscape painting. As stated in his seals, he was also seeking ‘the spirit’ and ‘emotions’ from this painting.
Vainker, Shelagh, Chinese Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2000), no. 73 on p. 92, illus. p. 93 fig. 73
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