Appreciation of Xu Beihong, a master of painting, "Watching the crowds move from afar and standing in front of the thunder"

Xu Beihong (1895-1953) was born in Yixing, Jiangsu Province. China is a modern painter and art educator. He studied painting with his father since childhood, was good at figures, animals, flowers and birds, advocated realism, advocated light and modeling in painting, emphasized the accurate grasp of the anatomical structure and bones of the object, and emphasized the ideological connotation of his works, which had a great influence on the painting circles in China at that time and was called the founder of modern art education in China.

Xu Beihong is good at expressing his patriotic enthusiasm by using horses to describe people and hold things. The horse in Xu Beihong's works is "had banished earthly horses for ten thousand generations", which is full of energy and heroism. From this picture of horses, we can see that Xu Beihong broke the traditional modeling program of horse painting, absorbed the light and dark modeling and deconstruction of western painting, and integrated it into the traditional ink painting techniques in China, thus creating a refreshing freehand horse painting technique. This painting was created in 194, during the period of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and he poured his eager expectation for the Chinese nation to rise and awaken into the horses with his pen and ink.

In this painting, Xu Beihong uses full and unrestrained ink to outline the turning parts such as head, neck, chest and legs, and sweeps out the mane tail with a dry pen, so that the change of shade and dryness is natural. The straight line of the horse's leg is thin and strong, like a steel knife, which penetrates through the back of the paper, while the arc of the abdomen, buttocks and mane tail is very elastic and dynamic. On the whole, the pen and ink are smooth and both in form and spirit.