Ch'i Pai-shih (22 November 1863-16 September 1957), prominent artist. He was best known as a painter, but was highly regarded as a calligrapher and seal engraver as well. A native of Hsiangt'an, Hunan, Ch'i Pai-shih grew up in a poor peasant family; he lived with his grandparents, parents, and his eight younger brothers and sisters. When he was eight he attended a school in his native village in Hunan, but was forced to drop out because of illness after less than a year. Like many other poor children in China, he helped his family by gathering firewood and by tending water buffaloes on the farm. Too small and weak for the heavier farm duties, Ch'i turned to carpentry. He was apprenticed to his cousin's grandfather when he was 12. Progressing from the beginner's rough work, he learned to make fine, delicate objects and to carve decorative furniture. While selecting motifs for his design, he became acquainted with the popular manual of Chinese painting Chieh-tzu-yuan hua-chuan [drawings in the garden of mustard seeds], and from that work he copied pictures, which stimulated his interest in painting.
Not until he was 27 did Ch'i Pai-shih have the opportunity to study painting and classical literature with a qualified teacher. He was doing carpenter's work in an employer's house when he came to know two professional artists, Hsiao Hsiang-kai and Wen Shao-k'o, who taught him to paint portraits. Since there was great demand for traditional family ancestor portraits as well as for portrayals of legendary gods, Ch'i became a professional painter. He was particularly noted for his skill in portraying the exact appearance of human figures and in bringing out details of costume. At about the same time he learned other techniques of painting from Hu Tzu-wei (H. Ch'in-yuan) and began to read classical texts, including T'ang poetry, under the guidance of Ch'en Tso-hsun (T. Shao-fan), a private tutor of the Hu family. At the age of 32, Ch'i Pai-shih organized a group of seven students who were interested in studying poetry. Through this group, known as the Lung-shan shih-she, he became acquainted with Li Te-hsun (b. 1870; H. Sung-an) and his nephew Li Ch'eng-li, from whom he began to learn the art of seal engraving. He also became acquainted with the noted Hunanese scholar and poet Wang K'ai-yun (q.v.). Ch'i Pai-shih became one of Wang K'ai-yun's noted craftsman-pupils, the other two being Chang Tengshou, a blacksmith, and Tseng Chao-chi, a coppersmith. Wang K'ai-yun was said to have been very proud of these three.
After gaining success as a professional artist and becoming acquainted with many scholars, Ch'i began in 1900 to build a house, which he called Chieh-shan yin-kuan, at the foot of Lien-hua mountain in Hunan. There he lived for some 20 happy years before moving to Peking. In 1902 he accepted an invitation to teach painting in Sian, and he began to travel extensively to see the varied natural scenery of China. During the next seven years, he made five trips from Hunan to other provinces of China, including Shensi, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Kwangsi, and Kiangsu, visiting famous mountains, rivers, lakes, and cities. These travels contributed to the maturation of his own individual style of painting. During his travels he met many noted scholars and officials who were interested in his art. Among these were Ch'ü Hung-chi (1850-1918), then secretary of the Grand Council; Fan Tseng-hsiang (1846-1931 ECCP, II, 782); Hsia Shou-t'ien; Kuo Jenchang; Li Jui-ch'ing (1867-1920) ; and Tseng Hsi.
After returning from his travels, Ch'i Pai-shih built two other houses, called Chi-p'ing-t'ang and Pa-jen-lou. He designed his own furniture, planted fruit trees, and raised insects and animals as subjects for life sketching. In these new studios he also read and wrote poems, engraved seals, and painted the famous mountains and rivers which he had seen, using the sketches made during his travels. These paintings, in addition to some he did as early as 1901, formed a series of some 50 landscape pictures known as the "Chieh-shan t'u-chüan" [scenes of the mountain Chieh-shan] . These were later inscribed with poems and postscripts by many contemporary scholars with whom Ch'i was acquainted. As in another collection of his landscapes, the "Twenty-four Scenes of Shih-meng," the techniques represent his early style, which was detailed and delicate.
In 1917, when a civil disturbance broke out in Hunan, Ch'i left his home for Peking. He settled permanently in Peking in 1920, although he made occasional trips back to Hsiang-t'an and visited such famous cities as Hangchow, Chungking, and Chengtu. The move to Peking at the age of 58 marked a turning point in Ch'i's career because his broadened contacts with scholars and artists inspired him to new activity in his art. Thus, during the latter part of his life, Ch'i Pai-shih became a figure of international prominence.
His new style, as expressed in works painted after 1920, is characterized by simplicity, vigor, and elegance. It shows a sense of life and humanity and is not without humor and satire. Ch'i became particularly interested in portraying small living creatures such as grasshoppers, dragonfües, shrimps, crabs, frogs, chicks, sparrows, and squirrels. For his flowers, fruits, and vegetables, he used robust reds and yellows against leaves of different tones of black ink, the deepest black often used to emphasize a certain part of the picture. His later landscapes and human figures, utterly simple in composition, also employ free and forceful strokes. Ch'i Pai-shih's theory of painting was somewhere between that of realism and idealism. He once wrote: "The excellence of a painting lies in its being like, yet unlike. Too much likeness flatters the vulgar taste; too much unlikeness deceives the world." His style, the product of his genius and sustained work, was inspired by the best tradition of many of the earlier Chinese masters as well as by the modern artists. Ch'i Pai-shih's calligraphy, like his later painting, was vigorous. His strokes generally were heavy and forceful. When inscribed on his pictures, the calligraphy adds new flavor to the painting. A similar change of style also took place in his seal engraving. In the early period his inscriptions followed the delicate style of two leading engravers of the Chekiang school : Ting Ching (1695-1765; T. Ching-shen; H. Yen-lin, Lung-hung shan-jen) and Huang I (1744-1801 ; H. Hsiao-sung). Later he changed to the freer style of Chao Chih-ch'ien (1829-1884; T. Hui-shu). During the later years of his life, Ch'i created an unusually forceful style of his own, one perhaps influenced by the skills which he had originally learned as a carpenter carving in wood.
His poetry was natural and simple, free from difficult words and artificiality, many of his verses being written for his paintings. A poem on one landscape says: "To plant trees in the course of one decade is easy,/ To paint them through the effort of a whole life is hard;/ When hairs are faded and eyes become almost blind,/ Who comes to appreciate the 'Mountains after the Rain'?" This poem reflects his experience of hardship and struggle during almost a century of life and work.
During his long residence in north China, Ch'i Pai-shih worked diligently at painting and seal engraving, maintained a wide acquaintance with contemporary artists, and taught many students. Before the Japanese invasion in 1937, Ch'i lectured on Chinese painting at the Peiping Academy of Art when Li Feng-mien (b. 1901) was president of that school. He had many associates as pupils during this period, including Ch'en Nien (b. 1876; T. Pan-ting), Hsu Peihung (q.v.), Wang Yün (1896-1935; T. Meng-pai), Yao Hua (1876-1930; T. Ch'ungkuang, Mang-fu), and Yti Fei-an (1899-1959). Mei Lan-fang (q.v.), one of the leading figures in the Peking theater, studied painting under both Ch'i Pai-shih and Wang Yun. In his memoirs Mei Lan-fang refers to Ch'i's passion for morning glories, frequently cultivated by connoisseurs of the arts in China, and to the fact that Ch'i was known as an expert horticulturist.
One of Ch'i Pai-shih's most intimate friends of the period was Ch'en Heng-k'o, eldest son of the poet Ch'en San-li (q.v.) and a brother of the historian Ch'en Yin-k'o. Himself a painter and a prominent student of Chinese art history, Ch'en Heng-k'o became an influential critic of Ch'i Pai-shih's paintings. It was Ch'en who suggested the change in Ch'i's style from delicate to free and bold strokes; and it was he who introduced Ch'i Pai-shih's work to Japan in 1922, where his paintings began to receive international recognition.
During the years of war with Japan from 1937 to 1945, Ch'i Pai-shih remained in Peking, but did not participate in the Japanese-sponsored regime there. In 1946 he made a trip to Nanking and Shanghai, where his work was exhibited under the auspices of the All-China Art Association and other art groups. When he was 75, a fortune teller told Ch'i that he would undergo a crisis at that age. As he placed some faith in this prediction, Ch'i changed his age to 77 in order to "cross the sea by deceiving heaven." As a result of this change, the signatures and dates on his later works often give his simulated age.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Ch'i Pai-shih's name became associated with many national and international organizations. In 1949 he was one of the sponsors of the Chinese Painting Society, designed to rally painters to preserve and develop the great tradition of Chinese painting, and in 1953 he became honorary president of that organization. He was also an honorary professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts; a member of the second national committee of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles; a senior member in the Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries; and a delegate from Hunan to the First National People's Congress. He became a corresponding member ofthe Academy of Arts and Sciences of East Germany in 1955 and a member of the Asian Solidarity Committee of China in 1956. He received the 1955 International Peace Prize awarded by the World Peace Council in Stockholm. One-half of the prize money was used to establish the Ch'i Paishih scholarship for the advancement of Cineseh traditional painting.
Ch'i died at Peking in 1957 at the age of 95. He willed to the Central People's Government all of the works in his possession, including paintings, calligraphy, seals and their impressions, poems, and other writings. Several memorial exhibits of these were held in Peking, Shanghai, and other cities. It has been estimated that Ch'i produced more than 10,000 paintings in his lifetime. During the year 1953 alone, he painted no fewer than 600 pictures. A memorial museum housing his work has been opened at one of his estates in Peking. Ch'i Pai-shih was a man of sincerity and integrity. He lived an extremely simple life of industry and thrift. When he was 12, his father took a t'ung-hsi [child-daughter-in-law] into his family, but the marriage did not take place until Ch'i was 19. At the age of 57, he took a concubine who became his second wife in 1941, one year after his first wife died in his native town. Ch'i had seven sons and six daughters, several of whom followed their father's style in painting and seal engraving. Especially well known are Ch'i Liang-yuan (1889-c. 1943), his eldest son; Ch'i Liang-ch'ih (1921—), his fourth son; and Ch'i Liang-chi (1923-), his fifth son. "* Ch'i Pai-shih's publications include collections of his paintings, seal engravings, and poems. Many of his paintings, reproduced by collotype, have been published in albums. These include the Ch'i Pai-shih hua-ts'e [paintings of Ch'i Paishih], a collection of 35 pictures with a preface by Hsu Pei-hung; and the Pai-shih lao-jen hsiao-ts'e [paintings of the old man Pai-shih], a collection of 12 pictures of flowers and fruits painted in 1920. The facsimile reproductions with polychrome wood cuts published by the Jung-pao-chai of Peking include the Ch'i Pai-shih hua-chi, a folded album of 22 pictures; the Pai-shih lao-jen hua-ts'e, a folder often pictures of flowers; the Pai-shih mo-miao [sketches of Paishih], an album of 12 pictures painted in 1948 for Hsu Pei-hung; and the K'o-hsi wu-sheng, a collection of pictures of insects. Several of his works have been reproduced and mounted on scrolls.
Chi's collection of seal impressions, Pai-shih yin-ts'ao, was first published in 1928 with 200 impressions. The revised edition of 1933 included impressions of some 60 seals carved after Ch'i was 70. His poems were published under the title Chieh-shanyin-kuan shih-ts'ao [poems from the poetry-humming studio in the serene mountain] and were reproduced in his own calligraphy. This volume was enlarged and published in 1933 under the title Pai-shih sHihts'ao [drafted poems of Pai-shih], edited by Fan Tseng-hsiang with a preface by Ch'i and a postscript by Wang Hsün. A representative collection of his works may be found in the Ch'i Pai-shih tso-p'in hsuan-chi [selected works of Ch'i Pai-shih], published at Peking in 1959. That work includes photographs of 133 paintings and examples of calligraphy and 155 seal impressions produced between 1887 and 1955. It was compiled by Li Chin-hsi, a close friend of Ch'i, and Ch'i Liang-chi, Ch'i's fifth son.
Ch'i Pai-shih's paintings have been shown in cities throughout the world. He is generally regarded as the outstanding contemporary artist of China. Ch'i said that he was at his best in his poems; next, in his seal engraving and calligraphy; and last, in his painting. His appraisal was conventionally modest, and critics agree that his artistic achievements probably rank in the reverse order.
