Description:
nine schrimp scattered over bottom of image crawling up toward top right, line of text down left edge
Label Text:
Qi Baishi was the best known artist of traditional ink painting in China during the 1920s and 1930s. Because of his humble peasant beginnings, Qi had to make a living as a carpenter at a young age. He later became a professional painter and sold pictures of popular deities and other approachable subjects. Qi diligently applied his talents to learn from the old masters and began to develop his own style, favoring rustic elegance and spontaneous brushwork in a tall, narrow scroll format. In 1917, Qi moved to Beijing, where he achieved success and eventually became famous worldwide.
Qi Baishi was a prolific artist particularly noted for his ink paintings of birds and flowers, as well as of crabs and shrimp. To catch their movement with spontaneous brushwork, Qi often sketched shrimp from life and observed details of their claws and body segments. This scroll is a case in point, showing how Qi excelled at using efficient brush strokes to reduce the subject to its essentials yet at the same time vividly catching its characteristics. In addition to calligraphy and painting, Qi was also proficient at seal carving and had carved hundreds of stone seals by the time he reached middle-age. As seen in the inscription on this painting, Qi called himself “a rich man with three hundred stone seals” to commemorate his seal collection.
Helen White, the donor of the scroll, received this and five other scrolls from her friend Margaret Sheets, a Christian missionary who taught in Nanjing during the late 1940s. Ms. Sheets collected scrolls through gifts and purchase and brought them with her to the U.S. early in 1951, soon after America and China ceased diplomatic relations with the outbreak of the Korean War.
F. Zhang
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+2012.8.1 |
