Traveling at the Black Bridge

Among the active painters in Beijing during the 1930s and ’40s, Pu Ru was widely considered to be the most accomplished. His paintings faithfully inherited the tradition of the Northern School of Chinese landscape painting, a commitment to tradition that made him stand out from his contemporaries. In Traveling at the Black Bridge, Pu Ru carefully depicted a group of figures that included a traveler riding his horse and two servants, one of whom carries a stack of books on a shoulder pole. He applied a form of common “impact” brushwork known as “axe-cut strokes” that follows the Northern School tradition’s emphasis on angular and austere painting with strong outlines. (“Debating Art: Chinese Intellectuals at the Crossroads,” curated by Yuhua Ding, with assistance by Elizabeth Emrich, and presented at the Johnson Museum February 2-July 8, 2018)