LOTS 2200-2203 PROPERTY FROM Mr. RAJA HUTHEESING These paintings by Qi Baishi were acquired directly from the artist by Raja Hutheesing (1906-1991), who was a member of one of India's most illustrious families. He fought for India's independence along with his wife Krishna Nehru Hutheesing (1907-1967), who was the youngest sister of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. At turns a businessman, official, diplomat, and journalist, Mr. Hutheesing travelled to China in 1951 and 1952. After his second journey, he published his observations in 1953 in The Great Peace: An Asian's Candid Report on Red China, which was well received in India as an honest and informed description of China and its political leaders. In this text, Mr. Hutheesing described his meeting with Qi Baishi and the circumstances that led to the painting of these pictures. "I wanted to ask Chi to paint a picture for me because I hoped to see him working. It was difficult to ask, however, because the need for double translations made informal conversation laboriousK As soon as Chi Pei-she heard that I wanted him to paint, he became energetic, lively and anxious to work. The change was sudden and complete. He rolled up his sleeves and said, 'Yes, I will paint for you but it will cost your forty-four thousand yuan per square foot.' This was around two dollars and I readily agreed. 'What shall it be? Flowers, birds, lobsters?' 'Paint what you like, what the moment drives you to,' I answered. I told him that I was anxious to write about him so that the people in my country would know something of his artKKI did not want to suggest specifically what he should paint, hoping he would create something of his own will. So I said, 'Do a landscape; I have seen too many of your pictures dealing with flowers.' The old man stopped for a moment and stared hard at me, then he waved his hand at the interpreter and said, 'Tell him it will cost double.' The old man's sleeves were pinned up and his woman companion brought out the thin paper from the cupboard. She then began to grind his paint. He stood at the table for several minutes with his paper drawn taut in front of him, a brush in one hand and the other feeling the texture of the paper. Suddenly he put his finger on one spot and began to paint. He looked up at me and said, 'I will paint a simple picture, for what is good is always simple.' For forty minutes, he worked, occasionally mixing the black paint with water to get different degrees of blackness. At last there lay before me on the table a landscape of a meadow with two cows resting in the haze of a spring day. . . I begged the old man to tell me why he had painted the two cows, one sitting and one with its back turned gazing away in the distance. 'Do the cows,' I asked, 'signify the two civilizations of India and China? Do they mean anything?' The old man shook his head and said, 'There is not meaning in the picture. I am not a politician. They are just two animals, that is all.' 'But why,' I said, 'two cows and not something else?' Chi Pei-she replied, 'I just felt like painting two cows.' Then his face lit up and he said, 'The cows remind me of my childhood. Don't you know I was a cowherd till I was twelve years old? I have seldom drawn cows in my pictures but today I remembered my childhood. I knew then what the cows in the picture meant. It was the cow that was running away from him. It was the cow that had brought him unhappiness. It was the beginning of his creative art. I could feel the deep sadness of his poverty-stricken childhood. He had painted for me a picture which took him back to his village after eighty years of life all over the rest of China. He had found little happiness except in the village landscape where he had wandered as a child, caring neither for happiness nor sorrow. I was more than grateful for the picture he had painted for me." - Raja Hutheesing, The Great Peace: An Asian's Candid Report on Red China, pp. 58-61.

QI BAISHI (1863-1957)

Two Oxen

Details

QI BAISHI (1863-1957)
Two Oxen
Inscribed and signed, with two seals of the artist
Dated renchen year (1952)
Dedicated to Hu Tixin (Raja Hutheesing, 1906-1991)
Hanging scroll, ink on paper
103 x 34.5 cm. (40 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.)
20th Century

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Lot Essay

In agricultural societies, oxen are a highly prized and revered means of production for tillage and farming, seldom butchered for meat. Qi Baishi's love for nature and his deep attachment towards his village see expression through thick and earthy brushstrokes that accentuate the vitality and sturdiness of the ox.

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