Swimming Shrimps
3 min readPainter: Qi Baishi
Painting Year: modern era
Material: silk scroll
Dimension: unknown
Collection Place: National Art Museum of China
Swimming Shrimps is one of Qi Baishi’s paintings with theme of shrimp. Qi Baishi is a famous Chinese modern painter. Six shrimps are painted in this artwork, including four shrimps in near position and two shrimps in far position.
This artwork is mainly painted with light ink. With wet ink color and vivid shape, the shrimps seem to swin in the water. The blank background is used to replace reality with fantasy so that people can fall into unlimited reverie. Water seems flled with the whole paper, although no water is painted in this artwork.
Head and body of shrimps are painted with light ink. The semi-translucent shrimps are very vivid. String, claw and leg of shrimps are outlined with dry thin lines, which are crossed and intersected. Contrast between surface and line, between wetness and dryness and between denseness and sparseness is like wonderful music with rhythm, with vivid charms.
Art Master
Qi Baishi(1864-1957)
Qi Baishi was a native of Xiangtan, Hunan. He was the famous Chinese painting master in the 20th century,who lived in Beijing in his old age. He was accomplished in terms of poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal cutting. He was good at painting of flower, bird, insect and shrimp, as well as painting of fgure and painting of landscape in freehand style. His painting of flower and bird has the greatest influence. In 1953, he was awarded with the title of”People’s Artist”conferred by Ministry of Culture of the PRC. In 1955, he won International Peace Prize of World Peace Council.
Anecdote
Qi Baishi painted frog skillfully
One day, Lao She(a famous Chinese writer) invited 91-year-old Qi Baishi to paint an artwork entitled”Frog Chorus Amidst Mountain Spring for Ten Li (a unit of distance in China).”In order to prepare for this painting, Qi Baishi fell sleepless for two nights.
The painting was fnished soon. When Lao She rolled out the scroll, he acclaimed. No frog appeared in the artwork, but rather a spring gurgles from remote mountainous stones, and lively little tadpoles happily swimalong with torrential stream. This helps people think that tadpoles follow frog so that tadpole sounds echowith frog sounds. As tadpoles come along with the stream from remote mountains, they certainly swim for 1ong distance (Ten Li). People seem to hear the frog chorus from far to near. Qi Baishi’s artistic idea is extremely admirable.
Do You Know?
Paintings of modern China
Paintings of modern China follow two major tendencies：1）Carrying forward traditions of the Chinese painting，innovating based on the traditions and paying attention to national features（represented by Qi Baishi，Huang Binhong and Pan Tianshou）；2）Integrating both western and traditional Chinese styles，and introducing techniques and concepts of the Western painting into the Chinese painting so as to push forward Chinese painting to further develop（represented by Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian）.
“Old Resident in Xingziwu.”
Two straighten their body in far position.
This shrimp recoils its body.
—This shrimp draws to near position.
This shrimp swims with leisure.
String，claw and leg of shrimps are outlined with dry thin lines，which are crossed and interesting.
Water seems filled with the whole paper，although no water is painted in this artwork.In the traditional replace reality with fantasy so that people can fall into.
