Description The Picture of Peony is the best of Wu Changshuo’s peony paitings. “Western Red” and his vigorous brushstrokes combined western and eastern aesthetics.
Biographical Details Born in Anji Zhejiang province, Wu Changshuo (1844-1927) was a central figure in Chinese painting during the early years of the 20th century. Wu was born into a family of scholars that was forced to flee the violence and the turmoil inflicted by the infamous Taiping rebellion. Wu was eventually separated from his family and thereafter dedicated himself to art and different facets of traditional culture, mainly to the art of calligraphy and traditional seal carving. His seals became famous for their elegance and soon became an independent style know as the “Wu style’, Wu became the first director of the Xiling Seal Carving Society and at the same time made a living from selling his calligraphy which was a peculiar blend of many different scripts. Wu Changshuo influenced a later trend in painting that belonged to a Chinese artistic movement known as Hai Pai or Shanghai School. This highly influential cultural trend became dominant in painting as well as in cinema, music and literature. The Shanghai Scholl had a romantic character and stressed the idea of “art for art’s sake”, it combined eastern and western aesthetics and reflected the great changes that cities such as Shanghai were going through. Wu started painting rather late during his thirties and he was fully able to express his diverse skills and talent. His bold and vigorous brushstrokes never crossed the line of becoming too grotesque, thus although powerful they still showed control, gentleness and refinement. Wu liked to use sharp contrast between light and dark and was a forerunner in the use a red color introduced from the west called “Western Red” or “Yang Hong”. In his plum blossom paintings which he is most famous for Wu replaced the small and meticulous strokes of the time with large and bold strokes derived form calligraphy together with the “Western Red” to create something that was very fresh, full of vitality and obviously different to the trained eye of the Chinese who were familiar with the long tradition of plum blossom painting. Wu Changshuo’s art displayed great mastery of brush and ink he was largely responsible for rejuvenating the genre of flower-and-bird painting by introducing an expressive, individualistic style more generally associated with the literati School of painting, his art inspired his contemporaries as well as later generations, his art had influence over great painters such as Qi Baishi and Pan Tianshou.
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