Qi Baishi is a very interesting figure – an artist who worked in a traditional Chinese technique that had been formed centuries ago, but at the same time gave it a new sound.

He was born in 1863 in one of the villages of Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, to a poor family of Chinese peasants. The boy was barely 12 years old when he was sent as an apprentice to a carpenter. Capable and persistent, he still snatched time to study painting and learn to read and write. Success was also reflected in carpentry; from the age of 15, he learned to skillfully carve wood. Realizing his growing skill, Qi Baishi called himself “dedicated to wood”, and in the village he was honored with the respectful address “carpenter Zhi”.

He observed nature, was inspired by images of folk art. He independently mastered not only hieroglyphic writing, but also artistic calligraphy, learned versification, seal carving, and painted portraits for villagers. Since there was not enough time, he had to work at night by the light of a lamp.

At the age of 27, his talent attracted attention. People started talking about him. It was from this period that the long path of mastering the secrets of painting began. By this time, Qi Baishi was respectfully called by such names as “Teacher Zhi”, “Old Tree”, “White Stone”. And the artist began to sign his paintings Baishi (white stone).

Qi Baishi sought his individual style by improving his skills in the composition of scrolls and honing his calligraphy technique. At the same time, he turned to a range of images that had existed in Chinese painting for many centuries. But the artist’s personality was so uniquely bright that it helped him bring novelty and originality to old themes. Qi Baishi’s teachers are considered to be masters Hu Qinyuan and Chen Shaofan, who, as was customary among Chinese artists, were also poets. Qi Baishi himself composed poetry. And his main idol in painting was the painter Xu Wei, who lived three centuries before him.

Qi Baishi’s artistic techniques were both traditional and new. Like all masters of the national painting “guohua”, he painted quickly, with a damp brush on easily blotted paper. With this method of execution, it is impossible to erase or correct a single stroke. Such work requires precision of eye and hand. The artist’s creative manner is distinguished by impetuosity, temperament, scope and boldness. With his fleeting, seemingly randomly made sketches, he evokes thoughts and images stored in the memory of every person. Looking at his paintings, where a bright flower opens and reaches for the light, where marsh frogs sing their trills, where dragonflies flutter their light wings above lotus leaves, the viewer feels not so much an outside observer as a co-author of the works of the great master.

Like other Chinese painters, Qi Baishi created his works not directly from nature, but from memory. He has an apt statement about the need to maintain a constant distance in painting between external verisimilitude and genuine internal truth. “In painting, the secret of mastery lies on the verge of similarity and dissimilarity. Excessive similarity is vulgar, dissimilarity is deception.” With this statement, he emphasized that in art, the world of poetic dreams always separates from everyday earthiness.