Fu Baoshi

Fu Baoshi a Chinese painter of the twentieth century (1904-1965) who is celebrated for his landscape paintings combining traditional brushwork with new conceptions of scale and atmosphere, and who helped to create the monumental style of landscape painting sponsored by the state in the People's Republic of China.

Early Life and Education

Fu Baoshi was born on 5 October 1904 in Xinyu, in Jiangxi province, into a poor family, and he was orphaned and raised by relatives. He showed an early talent for drawing and studied at the Jiangxi Provincial First Normal School, where he received training in both Chinese and Western art. His ambition and his gifts won him the support of teachers who helped him continue his studies.

In 1933 he travelled to Japan to study at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, where he specialised in oriental art history under the scholar and painter Kinoshita. He immersed himself in Japanese scholarship on Chinese painting, studied the collections of museums in Tokyo and Kyoto, and developed an appreciation of the atmospheric effects and careful research that marked the best of Japanese art history.

He returned to China in 1935 and took up a teaching post at the National Central University in Nanjing, where he lectured on the history of Chinese painting. His scholarly work, including a study of the origins of Chinese landscape painting, established him as an authority, and he edited a history of Chinese art that became a standard reference.

War Years and Artistic Development

With the outbreak of war against Japan, Fu Baoshi moved with his university to the temporary capital at Chongqing in the interior. The wartime years were formative for him. He travelled through the mountains and rivers of Sichuan and the surrounding regions, painting the rugged landscapes he saw and studying the works of the old masters he was able to find.

He developed a distinctive style in which the brush was used to create a sense of swirling movement and emotional intensity. His figures, especially those depicting poets, scholars and historical characters, were drawn with energetic lines, while his landscapes often conveyed storm, mist or twilight through dense accumulations of ink.

In 1942 and 1943 he held exhibitions in Chongqing that established his reputation and brought him into contact with many of the leading intellectual and artistic figures who had gathered in the wartime capital. His combination of scholarship and original creation made him a central figure in the cultural life of the period.

Landscape Painting and the State Commissions

After 1949 Fu Baoshi adapted his art to the new circumstances of the People's Republic. He became a professor at the Nanjing Normal College and later at the Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Chinese Painting, and he took part in the effort to find a modern idiom for landscape painting that could serve the needs of the new state.

His most famous works are large landscape paintings celebrating the beauty and grandeur of the Chinese land, often created in collaboration with other leading painters. He travelled widely to sketch scenery, including a celebrated journey along the upper reaches of the Yangtze, and he produced panoramic compositions that combined careful observation with a powerful sense of design.

In cooperation with Guan Shanyue he painted a monumental landscape for the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, a work that brought together the ambitions of many artists of the period. His paintings of party and revolutionary subjects, alongside his landscapes, made him one of the most prominent artists of the era.

Technique, Theory and Connoisseurship

Fu Baoshi's technique was rooted in a deep study of the brush and ink traditions of earlier centuries, but he transformed them into something recognisably modern. He used a moist brush and rapid strokes to build up textures and atmospheric effects, and he often contrasted dark, saturated ink with areas left almost empty to create a sense of light and distance.

As a scholar he wrote and lectured on the history of Chinese painting, the theory of brush and ink, and the biographies of the masters. He argued that a painter must cultivate both the eye of a historian and the hand of a craftsman, and his own example showed how scholarship could nourish living art rather than confine it to imitation.

He was also an accomplished seal carver and calligrapher, and his inscriptions and seals formed an integral part of his compositions. His ability to move between research and creation gave his paintings an intellectual depth that his contemporaries admired and his students tried to emulate.

Late Years, Influence and Legacy

In the years before his death Fu Baoshi continued to paint and teach, and he enjoyed official recognition as one of the leading artists of the nation. He died on 29 September 1965 in Nanjing. A museum devoted to his work was later established in the city.

His students and followers carried forward his approach to landscape painting, and his monumental treatment of the Chinese land influenced the direction of art in the People's Republic. The documentary value of his sketches and travel paintings has made them an important record of the country at a time of rapid change.

He is remembered as an artist who united the sensitivity of the scholar with the ambition of the modern painter, and whose landscapes gave emotional and pictorial expression to a vision of the nation and its terrain. His work remains a landmark in the history of twentieth-century Chinese art.

See also

• Chinese painting
• Landscape painting
• Nanjing Normal University
• Ink wash painting