Chinese watercolourist Guan Weixin recently held a solo exhibition in North
America and his works sold for between US$30,000-US$50,000 each piece, as the
artist from Northeast China's Jilin Province claimed.
Although money may not be an important criterion in judging the success of
art, it does reflect the popularity of the art genre.
Watercolour art has not always enjoyed such a rosy market over the past
century since its introduction from the West and has really only blossomed in
the past 20 years. The story of watercolour painting in China can be seen in a
gigantic retrospective show being held in Beijing.
It is the largest and most inclusive art show of watercolour paintings on the
Chinese mainland.
Gala of watercolours
The 306 selected works on display are on loan from private collectors and
Chinese art institutions including Tianjin Municipal Museum, Guangzhou Art
Museum and Jiangsu Art Museum.
"After three years' preparation, the watercolour paintings by the most
renowned and representative artists in China, including those from Hong Kong,
Macao, and Taiwan, have finally been put on show," said Huang Tieshan, a veteran
watercolourist and director of Chinese Watercolour Art Committee under the
Chinese Artists Association.
Watercolour art was first introduced in China by Italian Jesuit missionary
Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) in 1715. However, education in watercolour art
for Chinese didn't begin until 1867, when the Tushanwan Painting Academy was
founded by French Catholic missionaries in Shanghai. Painting became a means to
spread their religious beliefs, according to Beijing-based art historian and
watercolourist Wang Chunli.
In master Chinese painter Xu Beihong's paper "New Chinese Art Movement:
History and Future," published in 1942, Xu called the painting academy "the
cradle of the earliest Western art on Chinese soil." Most art historians agree.
Watercolour art started its embryonic stage between 1867-1911 when China was
experiencing the most gruesome and painful transition from a feudal society to a
modern one.
Representative artists of this period include Xu Yongqing (1880-1953), Li
Tiefu (1869-1952), Li Shutong (1880-1942) and Wang Yuezhi (1894-1937).
During his first year as an art major in Japan in 1905,
Li Shutong, a celebrated, versatile artist better known as Buddhist master Hong
Yi to most Chinese, sent back a postcard to his family in Tianjin.
