Early Figure Painting

Other master artists of the Beijing school in that time included Chen Shizeng, Pu Ru, Wang Mengbai, Chen Banding, Wang Xuetao, Li Kuchan and Huang Zhou. Lu Xun, a famous writer, praised Chen Shizeng's paintings highly. Chen's paintings were `` creative and charming, simple but full of meanings,'' Lu said. Chen was a close friend of Qi. Chen's art character had an influence upon Qi's painting.

Other artists of the Beijing school had their personal fame but no big influence upon the innovation of the Beijing school. Laudably, the Tianjin-based artist Liu Kuiling and his son Liu Jiyou, developed their own style of animal painting which mixed Chinese painting skills with Western ones. Their painting realistically featured the shape of animals, showing the realism of art of that time.

3) Guangdong school

Gao Jianfu (1889-1951) was the most influential person among the Guangdong school artists. Gao Jianfu and his fellow artists, including Gao Qifeng, Chen Shuren and He Xiangning, made their own contributions to the rejuvenation of flower-and-bird painting.

They introduced water colour painting skills and techniques into their flower-and-bird painting to create new which made their works quite different from traditional Chinese paintings.

4) Zhejiang school

Pan Tianshou (1897-1971) was praised highly by the painting circles for his discovering and reproduction of flowers living primarily in the Yandang Mountain in Zhejiang. Pan's flower paintings showed vivid images of various kind of flowers, breaking away from the limit of painting books. Pan also won fame by his bird paintings featuring eagles and vultures. Under the influence of the Shanghai school, only a few Zhejiang school painters,such as Wu Fuzhi, achieved Fame.

5) Modern style

Modern flower-and-bird painting gained its impetus from the affiliation of some modern artists who received both Chinese traditional education and Western art training. Xu Beihong (1895-1953), Liu Haisu (1896-) and Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) were the top three representatives of the Modern style of painting. Combining Chinese and Western painting skills, Xu developed his personal style. However, Lin relied more on Western styles but using more Chinese skills, paint and paper to create more colourful ink-and-water paintings. Liu's flower-and-bird paintings featured traditional Chinese schools while adding some Western skills to make some changes.

The three different styles almost covered the main trends of the Modern style of flower-and-bird paintings in the modern time. However, Chen Zhifo was said to be the only ``traitor'' to the Modern style. He mixed Japanese paintings styles with traditional Chinese realistic painting skills, carrying forward traditional Chinese painting.

The innovation process of modern flower-and-bird painting also experienced some complications.

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