China painters who are interested in the new painting style often start with painting oil paintings, and use various substitutes for pigments and oils to draw oil paintings that are basically in the traditional style of China. It was not until young people who went abroad to study painting returned to China one after another that this situation was changed. Li Tiefu (1869- 1952), the earliest Guangdong painter who went abroad to study oil painting, went to the United States in 1887, and was employed by a placer gold mine (J.S.Sargent, 1856- 1925). Li Shutong (1880- 1942) first studied painting in Japan, and returned to China on 19 10, and then worked as an art teacher in Tianjin, Hangzhou and Nanjing. He initiated plaster model and human sketch, and organized a foreign painting research society at school.
After the Revolution of 1911, more and more people went abroad to study painting, mainly to Europe, America and Japan. Li, Feng, Wu Fating, Li Chaoshi and others went to Europe for aesthetic painting earlier, and later Lin Fengmian, Xu Beihong, Pan, Zhou Bichu, Pang Xunqin, Yan, Chang Shuhong, Wu Zuoren, Tang Yihe, Zhou Fangbai, Wu Guanzhong, Wu Dayu, Zhao Wuji and Zhu Dequn. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism have already gained a solid position in the painting circle when China students first arrived in Western Europe. Although academic classicism has been supported, its influence has declined. Li, Wu Fading, Li Chaoshi, Xu Beihong, Yan, Chang Shuhong and others who studied in Europe advocated classical realistic art, while a new painter represented by Kuroda (1866-1924) appeared in Japan, which changed the content of Japanese art education with impressionist artistic concepts. Wang Yuezhi, Hu Gentian, Yu, Feng Zikai, Fu Baoshi, Wang Jiyuan, Xu Xingzhi, Ni Yide, Wei Tianlin, Wang Shikuo and others studied painting in Japan. Because Japan does not have the deep tradition of oil painting as France, painters studying in Japan generally tend to follow the impressionist school in art. After returning home, overseas students usually take art teaching as their profession and spread their artistic ideas and painting techniques through schools.
Xu Beihong (1895- 1953), Liu Haisu (1896- 1994) and Lin Fengmian (1900- 1990). 19 12 years, 17-year-old Liu Haisu founded a printing college in Shanghai. 19 19 was changed to Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, which was the beginning of formal fine arts schools in China. In the 1920s, Beiping Art College, the first national art school in China, Hangzhou National Academy of Fine Arts, the art department of Nanjing Central University and Suzhou Art School, a private art school in Xiao Sheng, were established one after another. Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu, Lin Fengmian and Yan (1893- 1988) once presided over the teaching in these schools. Their different artistic views made them.
Xu Beihong is a realist, who received academic painting training at the Paris Academy of Fine Arts. He respected the solid sketch foundation and rigorous modeling skills, paid attention to the primacy of objective existence, emphasized that real life was the source of art, and advocated the integration of western classical realistic art techniques to improve Chinese painting; On the other hand, combined with Xu Beihong's painting practice, it can be clearly seen that he also rubbed some emotional elements of China's paintings into his oil painting creation. Similar to the works of Li Shutong, an artist who is good at poetry, calligraphy and painting, Xu Beihong's oil paintings also have strong China feelings. Although western painting techniques were used, the characteristics of these two masters as traditional literati in China have not been abandoned. In contrast, Xu Beihong's Chinese paintings "One Mountain in Gong Yu" and "Nine Square Heights" created by Xuan paper and ink painting show their academic and artistic background, and are juxtaposed with famous literati paintings. The same situation can also be seen in his well-received horse racing map. Unlike the pet horses such as "Night White" in the works of Koreans in the Tang Dynasty, Xu Beihong painted horses like wild athletes, and the latter's modeling of horses was obviously based on anatomy. Liu Haisu, who is one year younger than Xu Beihong, also came to France in the 1930s, but what impressed him was the painters with romantic spirit in classical art and the paintings known as "post-impressionism" in European art history. He was keen on copying Titian, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Van Gogh, Cezanne and other works, but he still showed an inclusive attitude in his later artistic creation and teaching. Liu Haisu's works after his return from Europe are masterpieces in the history of oil painting in China. His splash-ink painting in his later years is not so much the return of Wang Yang's wanton literati temperament, but rather the final expression of his unique sensitivity to the painting trend and his courage to be the first in the world. Lin Fengmian, a gentle man, studied painting in Dijon, France and Paris Art School. He was not only influenced by academic painting, but also absorbed the artistic influence of Impressionism and Fauvism. Lin Fengmian's lifelong thinking is to find a way of "combining Chinese and western" in painting, and all his works can be regarded as experiments embodying this idea. Almost all of his paintings in the middle and late period were completed on Xuan paper, but he couldn't find one that only used literati painting techniques. Color and form often become the theme of the picture, and western painting elements seem to play a leading role. At the same time, every painting retains the concrete content similar to that of China, from ancient ladies and opera figures to landscapes and flowers and birds that inspire our association, which brings mutual transformation and tolerance between China ink and western painting "hue" and calligraphy lines and western painting "sense of form".