Abstract
Xu Beihong (1895-1953), the modern Chinese master of fine art, was a native of Yixing in Jiangsu Province. His father, from whom he learned painting in his childhood, was also a painter. At the age of 20, Xu went to Shanghai to sell his paintings. In 1918, at the invitation of Cai Yuanpei, a leading educator of early 20th century China, he went to Peking University to work as an instructor at the Painting Research Society and during his stint, learnt Western artistic skills. The next year, along with many of his counterparts, he went to Europe to study Western art: he arrived in Paris and travelled to Berlin and Belgium. Back in China a decade later, he provided his own synthesis of Eastern and Western arts based on Western classical realist painting in an attempt to regenerate Chinese painting. His paintings won him several laurels and he was lauded as the pioneer of Chinese realist painting. Well, does he really deserve this title or is it rather a simplification? We shall find answers to these questions in this essay.
