Huang Binhong was also a famous Chinese painting master. There is a saying – “South Huang and North Qi” – meaning Huang Binhong is the representative painter for south China and Qi Baishi for north China. Huang Binhong was born in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. He was good at painting landscapes and flowers. From his point of view, it was very necessary to grasp the spirit of ancient artists and learn from them. He also emphasized the importance of studying nature. After he turned 70, Huang summed up the techniques used in Chinese traditional ink painting and applied them in a comprehensive way. He used his skills to paint landscapes that perfectly showed depth and magnitude. As a scholar-artist he also attained great achievements in calligraphy, seal carving, philology and archaeology.

    Zhang Daqian, born in Neijiang, Sichuan Province, was a legendary artist of the 20th century. He had a good command of painting, calligraphy, seal-carving and poetry, and was good at all the three traditional painting genres. He preferred freehand brushwork, and created the splash-ink-and-watercolor style whose gorgeous effect brought his art career to its peak.

    Zhang’s artistic career went through three phases: he learned from ancient artists before he was 40; learned from nature from 40 to 60; and followed his heart after he turned 60. Although his splash-ink-and-watercolor technique was influenced by Western abstract expressionism, his paintings never lost their Chinese spirit, and he finally became a Chinese painting master who had absorbed the essence of Western art.

    Xu Beihong, a native of Yixing, Jiangsu Province, is regarded as the founder of modern figure painting. In the 1950s, as realistic paintings depicting China’s reconstruction and ordinary people’s daily lives became popular, there emerged a group of outstanding figure painters. Xu Beihong was a representative of this group. He advocated improving Chinese painting by using the realistic techniques of French Classicism, and claimed that sketching is the basis of all plastic arts. His opinions had an epoch-making significance for Chinese painting history.

    Xu Beihong loved horses and was good at painting them. As with his figure paintings, Xu combined Western realistic styles with Chinese ink painting skills in depicting horses, making the animals come to life under his brush and seem as if they could understand human thoughts. The realistic ink style he initiated became one of the major painting styles of the 20th century.

    Lin Fengmian is also known as a pioneer of modern Chinese painting for blending Chinese and Western styles. He observed and imitated Impressionism and other Western painting that followed, combining what he learned from Western art with the traditional elements of Chinese painting. He constantly tried to break the boundary between Chinese and Western arts, in a bid to create a common form. His works covered a wide range of styles and subjects, from human figures, to landscape, to bird-and-flower, to still life. He is widely regarded as a spiritual leader in Chinese art circles of the 20th century, and exerted a great influence over later generations of painters.

    A book published in 1972 says that works by Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian and Xu Beihong sold at RMB 2 to 10 per square chi at that time. The book’s claims fit perfectly with many old painters’ memories. However, their works are now auctioned for RMB 200,000 or more per square chi, a 10,000-fold appreciation. How can prices be so high?

    The life experiences of the five famous painters mentioned in this article show that none of them became successful easily. They all employed unique artistic styles and made great contributions to their fields. In addition, a painter’s skills improve as he grows from youth to a mature man. Alongside social development, people’s aesthetic judgments also improve. All these factors bring higher prices for excellent artworks. As for the works of the same painter, the price of his early creations is lower than that of his later ones, and the price of his ordinary works are much lower than those of his top-notch ones. In this way, we can conclude that while collecting, we should focus on fine works of young and middle-aged painters with great potential.