A catalogue of the Ashmolean collection of Chinese paintings by Shelagh Vainker (published Oxford, 2000).
Fu Baoshi was born in Nanchang, Jiangxi province. From 1933 to 1935 he studied in Tokyo at the Imperial Art Academy, and on his return taught at the Central University in Nanjing from 1935 to 1952. During the Sino-Japanese War he moved with the University to Sichuan province, and in 1946 he returned to Nanjing where he spent the rest of his life. He sat on artists’ committees at both national and local levels. In 1959 he collaborated with Guan Shanyue on a huge landscape painting ‘This land with so much beauty aglow’ for Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, and is regarded as the one of the greatest literati painters of the 20th century.
This river landscape is in Fu’s typical style, which he developed in the 1930s and to which he remained true throughout his career. He was deeply influenced by the Qing individualist painter Shi Tao, whose biography he wrote. The painting also features steam ships and light towers, signifying a new and modernized nation under socialist construction.
Vainker, Shelagh, Chinese Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2000), no. 24 on p. 44, illus. p. 44 fig. 24
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