Chinese Culture – Qi Baishi（3）
Red Leaves
Qi Baishi made great accomplishments in painting, calligraphy, seal cutting, poetry and literature. His free-hand flower and bird paintings drew on the painting techniques of Xu Wei, Zhu Da, the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou and Wu Changshuo, thus showing his solid cultural foundation. Meanwhile, he fused Chinese farmers’ lives and sentiments in his paintings; he drew mice, oil lanterns, abacuses, hoes and rakes in his pictures to reveal the farmers’ simple and innocent attributes. He broke through the traditional Chinese painting notion of the bamboo symbolizing modesty and the orchid indicating delicacy.
Gourds
In his painting Chess Game in Bamboo Garden, he drew the chess board and the muck-rake together, a combination which was not seen in previous paintings by any literati artist. Qi Baishi had gone through dramatic changes to become a learned painter. His paintings vividly communicate rural life interests and atmosphere, bringing new content to Chinese literati painting and opening a new chapter in the development of Chinese free sketch flower and bird painting.
（Source: chinaculture.org）