Audio Guide

A native of Shexian in Anhui province, Huang Binhong, original name Zhi, zi Pucun, took up editorial duties at several publications and held a number of teaching posts at universities and colleges. An indefatigable traveller and observer of nature, he brought to his landscapes an incomparable familiarity with the natural world. His style reflects in particular the influence of Shiqi and Shitao: his brushwork is at once massive and intricate, and he also reveals a predilection for dark ink tones and for intermingling dry and wet brushstrokes.

This hanging scroll, executed in 1948, was dedicated to Mr Low Chuk Tiew, the donor of the Xubaizhai Collection. Low was a student under Huang and it was thanks to his tutor's guidance that he began to devote his efforts to collecting. The inscription on the painting mentions the Liantaoguan, a studio on the campus of Ji'nan University where Low took painting lessons. Huang executed the painting in his eighties, the period that is considered to be the most creative and distinctive in the development of his artistic career. Using dots and lines as the principal visual elements of his expressive vocabulary, he creates a rhythmic and vivid movement that goes beyond the superficial resemblance of the subjects depicted. Huang's outstanding accomplishment in the innovation of this tradition opened up a new direction in the genre of expressionistic landscape painting.