Pair of pheasants on a prunus branch in moonlight

Liu Kuiling was born in Tianjin at the end of the Qing dynasty and is known as an expert animal painter. Modeling his work on Ming- and Qing-dynasty bird-and-flower painters such as Lü Ji and Shen Quan, Liu also borrowed the watercolor techniques of the Italian painter Giuseppe Castiglione, who worked in the Chinese imperial painting academy under the Chinese name Lang Shining, and the modern Japanese painter Takeuchi Seiho. Liu’s work exemplifies a unique combination of Chinese traditional gongbi style (fine brushwork painting) with Western-influenced painting perspective and colors. Liu and his followers successfully established a new painting style that especially dominated North China. Moreover, their works reflect a particular period when Chinese intellectuals attempted to adapt Western science and technology into Chinese cultural tradition. (“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)