Qi Baishi, the master of traditional Chinese painting, paid great attention to supporting the underachievers during his lifetime. The outstanding achievements in painting of his students Li Kuchan and Wang Xuetao are already well known. However, apart from the many male successors, there is also a female disciple who is rarely known. She is Zhang Xiuling, an 82-year-old talented woman who is currently a librarian at the Central Research Institute of Literature and History.
Zhang Xiuling is a native of Tangshan, Hebei Province. She has loved painting since she was a child and has a high talent for painting. She was admitted to the Western Painting Department of the Beijing National Art College, the predecessor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, with first place. Due to her outstanding academic performance, she stayed at the school as a teaching assistant after graduating in 1939. The young female painter was not satisfied with her current level, so she also studied traditional Chinese painting under Qi Baishi.
Speaking of Zhang Xiuling learning painting from Qi Baishi, there is an episode. It was a sunny spring morning when she came to the waterside pavilion of Zhongshan Park in Beijing to visit Qi Baishi's painting exhibition. As soon as she entered the exhibition hall, she was attracted by the lifelike paintings by traditional Chinese painting masters. She felt as if she had returned to nature, standing by the crystal clear stream and watching the lively swimming shrimps... …This visit to the exhibition inspired her uncontrollable enthusiasm to learn Chinese painting from Qi Baishi. The next day, she took a dozen of her Western painting studies and came to Qi's apartment at No. 15 Kuache Hutong in Beijing, where she rudely knocked on the door and asked for an audience. The gatekeeper first sent her painting in, and then came out and told her: Mr. Qi, please come in. Zhang Xiuling entered the studio and without waiting for the old painter to greet her, she knelt down with a plop. Qi Baishi, who was 77 years old, couldn't help but laugh. He lifted her up and looked at her carefully for a while, and said: "Your painting is not bad, not bad. Children can be taught."
Realism in Western painting and portraiture in Chinese painting . Zhang Xiuling learned Chinese painting from Qi Baishi on the basis of 12 years of studying Western painting. Therefore, she naturally blended Chinese and Western techniques, giving the painting a distinct three-dimensional feel. The predecessors did not understand perspective when painting shrimps, and the shrimps they painted were often flaky. However, the shrimps painted by Zhang Xiuling were always round and had a strong texture. The chickens she drew had three-dimensional heads, bodies, and feet. The petunias painted also have a clear sense of perspective. In short, the painting not only has the style of Qi Baishi, but also shows the atmosphere and effect of Western painting. Qi Baishi was very happy to see that his female disciple Zhang Xiuling had achieved outstanding results in painting after long-term and hard work, and he couldn't help but write postscripts for her many times. In Zhang Xiuling's "Morning Flower", the old man Baishi wrote: "When Xiuling paints, she can respond to what she writes, and she is happy. Because she remembers numbers, Xiuling can love herself. Inscribed by 92-year-old Baishi." In a piece of "Shrimp" On the book, Qi Baishi wrote: "Those who learn to draw shrimps are the most talented." Zhang Xiuling also has a painting of "Chicken". The open-minded art master even wrote in the title: "Painting "Lingmao, my young female disciples are better than me." In Qi Baishi's life, it was rare for his disciples to have such high evaluations of their painting skills.
----------"China Today (Chinese Edition)" 1993 Issue 07