Lot Essay
Xu Beihong studied Chinese classics, poetry and painting with his father. In 1912 he studied painting at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and later entered the Zhendan University to study French. In 1918, upon the invitation of Cai Yuanpei, Xu taught at the Painting Techniques Research Institute of Beijing University, after which he went to Paris to attend the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. He transferred shortly to Berlin Fine Arts Academy in Germany and returned to Paris in 1923, when his oil painting "Old Woman" was elected for the French National Art Exhibition. Upon his return to China in 1927, another nine paintings were selected for the French National Art Exhibition, and he accepted a professorship at the Fine Arts Department of the National University of Nanjing. During the 30's and 40's Xu Beihong exhibited his work in Hong Kong, Singapore, Italy, France and India, where he met with Rabindranath Tagore. In 1938, during the Sino-Japanese War, he taught at the Fine Arts Department of Zhongqing University and in 1939 he travelled to Singapore and India to hold fund-raising exhibitions. In 1942 he started the founding of the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts. He was appointed President of the National Academy of Art in Beijing in 1946 and continued in that post after the Academy was reorganized as the Central Institute of Fine Art in 1949. That same year he was also elected the chairman of the Chinese Artists' Association.