Oil painting Art blog by Lucas Art

In 1601, Italian missionary Matteo Ricci came to China and brought with him Some European paintings. His gifts for emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty (1573-1619) included oil paintings of God and Madonna. Many Chinese painters were surprised at the vivid resemblance but they were not highly appreciated and Chinese painters did not follow the painting style. In the early Qing Dynasty, many European missionaries came to China and many of them could paint in oil. They worked in the imperial court, including Italian artists Joseph Castiglione, S.J. (1688-1766), Joseph Panzi (1733-1812) and French painter Jean-Denis Attiret (1702-1768). They were the first group of foreign painters to serve at the Chinese imperial court and were asked to paint portraits. Emperor Qianlong chose several young servants to learn oil painting from them.

After the Opium War, China’s exchanges with foreign countries became more frequent. More western religious and commercial paintings arrived in China, exerting more influence to the traditional Chinese paintings. But it was not until late 19th century that China had painters who really mastered the western painting skill. During the reign of Tongzhi (1862-1874), several missionaries from French established an orphanage in Shanghai and taught them various skills, one of which was oil painting. After these orphans grew up, they passed the oil painting skill they learnt to the society. In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, Zhou Xiang, Zhang Yuguang and Xu Yongqing, who were very active in Shanghai, were all from this orphanage. Meanwhile, some Chinese scholars went to Europe to study and see the outstanding paintings with their own eyes. Xue Fucheng (1838-1894) who served as ambassadors to Britain, France, Italy and Belgium in the late Qing Dynasty wrote the book Visiting Oil Paintings in Paris describing his experience of visiting a waxwork museum and oil painting museum in Paris, and became a very popular book. The modem political activist and philosopher Kang Youwei (1858-1927) also highly appreciated the paintings of Italian Renaissance in his article a ]ourney to Italy. Through their introductions, Chinese intellects, for the first time, understood another kind of painting skill which was totally different to that of Chinese paintings.

The newly arrived painting interested many ChiNese painters and they started to try painting in oil from books and publications and explored various alternative pigments. They still painted oil paintings with Chinese traditional style. The situation did not change until the youths who studied abroad came back. Li Tiefu (1869-1952) was one of those who went abroad to learn oil painting. He went to the United States in 1887 and was taught by J. S. Sargent (1856-1925). Li Shutong went to Japan to learn painting and came back to China in 1910. On his return, he taught in Tianjin, Hangzhou and Nanjing. He initiated the practice of coping statue and to draw pictures from real human models. He also organized painting society in the universes to study the western paintings.