Scholar amid Pines

Aiming to reform Chinese art, Fu Baoshi was inspired to travel to Japan and study Asian art history at the Imperial Art School in Tokyo. Interestingly, his Japanese teachers—artists Yokoyama Taikan (1868–1958) and Kosugi Hoan (1881–1964)—encouraged him to focus his studies on the rich traditions of Chinese art; Fu thus returned home to become an influential art teacher. During the Japanese occupation of China in the late 1930s, Fu retreated to Sichuan where he mastered landscape painting through intensive study and sketching of the spectacular mountains there. He later developed a distinctive style characterized by bold and free brushwork with fine details, which often featured a misty atmosphere and elegant forms embodied with a melancholic spirit.