Kao Weng (3 July 1889-2 November 1933), known as Kao Ch'i-feng, artist. A leading painter of the Lingnan-p'ai [Lingnan school], he worked to combine the excellences of Chinese and Western painting.

The fifth son of Kao Pao-hsiang, a physician who was interested in art, Kao Ch'i-feng was born in P'anyü, Kwangtung. He was ten years younger than Kao Chien-fu (for details of their early life, see Kao Lun^. After receiving a primary education in the Chinese classics, Kao Ch'i-feng went to Canton, where he studied under his brother's former teacher Chü Lien. In 1905, at the age of 16, he went to Japan to study Western art. Before returning to China in 1911, he joined the T'ung-meng-hui. After 1911, Kao Ch'i-feng and Kao Chien-fu established such enterprises as the Sheng-mei shu-kuan, a publishing house which specialized in art works. In 1918 Kao Ch'i-feng went to Canton, where he taught drawing at the Kwangtung Institute of Technolog' and established the Mei-hsueh-kuan, an art institute which later became the T'ien-feng Academy of Art. Beginning in 1925 he taught Chinese art at Lingnan University. He was commissioned in 1926 to do several large paintings for the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall at Canton. These works, which included "The Lone Eagle," "The White Horse," and "The Fierce Lion," were said to symbolize the revolutionary spirit of the new China.

In 1929 Kao Ch'i-feng built a studio, the T'ien-feng-lou, on the shore of the Pearl River in Canton. He lived a quiet life of teaching there with his adopted daughter and favorite pupil, Chang K'un-i, who cared for him after he became ill with tuberculosis.

Kao Ch'i-feng and Kao Chien-fu belonged to a group of artists which was referred to as the Lingnan-p'ai, or Lingnan school. Another prominent exponent of this school was Ch'en Shu-jen (q.v.). The Lingnan artists combined Japanese, Western, and Chinese painting techniques and placed new emphasis on realism. In a lecture delivered at Lingnan University Kao Ch'i-feng described his experience and his artistic credo. He told of his gradual realization that traditional Chinese paintings, though excellent in many respects, were overly metaphysical, illusive, and imaginary. Accordingly, he had turned to the study of Western art, paying particular attention to portrait painting, geometrical drawing, shading, and perspective. He then had made his first attempts to combine some ^Vestern methods with Chinese techniques of brush work, inking, and composition. "In short," he said, "I tried to retain what was exquisite in the Chinese art of painting and at the same time to adopt the best methods of composition which the world's art school had to offer, thereby blending the East and the West into a harmonious whole, taking for my guidance beauty, naturalness, and my own creative power and taste. The result is my paintings of today." The paintings of Kao's students also reflected his beliefs. Among his pupils were Chao Shao-ang ( 1 904—) , who became known for his studies of insects and flowers, and Chang K'un-i, noted for her animals and landscapes. In 1933 Kao Ch'i-feng went to Shanghai to embark on a trip to Berlin, where he planned to participate in a Sino-German art exhibition. However, he fell ill and died on 2 November in Shanghai. He was given a state funeral in recognition of his artistic accomplishment and his early association with the revolutionary movement in China.

Kao Ch'i-feng's publications included Hsin hüa hsUeh [new theories of painting], Meishu-shih [a history of art], and Ch'i-feng hua-fan [a manual of painting]. In 1935 a collection of Kao's lectures, paintings, and poems, Kao Ch'i-feng hsien-sheng jung-ai-lu, was published in Nanking as a memorial volume. Kao's works have been exhibited in Japan, Italy, Belgium, France, and the United States as well as in China. In 1944 an exhibition of works by Kao and Chang K'un-i was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Seven volumes of Kao Ch'i-feng's paintings have been published since 1935 under the title Ch'i-feng hua-chi.