PLANTAIN AND GRASSHOPPER

Qi Baishi grew up in the countryside and his rural roots remained an important source of artistic inspiration throughout his life. He enjoyed painting subjects, such as plants, birds, and animals, that surrounded him when he was young and felt strongly that an artist should not paint anything he had not personally observed. Qi Baishi played with insects as a child and continued to study them closely as an adult. Some insects he depicted in a highly realistic and detailed style, while others were painted in a more freehand fashion. Still others combined the two techniques. But always most important was to capture the spirit of the subject. As retold by Lang Shaojun, Qi Baishi remarked: ". . . those meticulous paintings that fail to catch the spirit are merely works of craftsmen, whereas those. . . [that] catch the spirit are indeed works of 'renowned painters.'" (Yang Xiaoneng, Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Ink Painters in Twentieth-Century China, Stanford, 2010, p. 168.)