Herdboy and ox

Artist Bio
Li Keran graduated from the Shanghai College of Fine Arts in 1925. He then entered the National Academy of Art at West Lake to study sketching and oil painting, where his teachers included Qi Baishi and Huang Binhong.
Description
Li was widely recognized as a master of traditional Chinese painting, but it was to Western art that he owed his innovative style, especially the use of light and shade, in which he was inspired by a 17th century Dutch painter, Rembrandt, and Impressionist paintings of the 19th century. In his landscapes, he often applied large areas of black ink to form rolling mountains, while leaving a thin white space like an outline to distinguish one mountain range from another in a technique comparable to the backlight effect in photography. The introduction of lighting effects into Chinese painting has thus become the hallmark of Li Keran’s paintings. In addition to landscapes, the ox was also one of Li’s favourite subjects. In this painting, the ox is depicted vividly with a chiaroscuro effect in a light ink wash.
—Collection of Hong Kong Museum of Art Taiyilou Collection, donated by Mr Lau Siu-lui
More information
Hong Kong Museum of Art Google Arts & Culture