Xie Zhiguang had a solid foundation in both Chinese and western painting techniques. His art can be divided into three phases. In his early years, Xie created paintings for monthly calendars. Starting in the 1930’s, he switched his interest to the meticulous style of Chinese painting. His style turned expressive in his twilight years.

The young Xie blended Chinese and western techniques to deliver realistic paintings. His first calendar painting Boat-Outing on West Lake was published when he was only twenty-three years old. He soon became famous among the first-generation calendar painters in Shanghai.

Since the fad of calendars faded in the early 1930’s, Xie turned to Chinese painting, focusing on the traditional genre of ladies in the meticulous style. He picked up the style of his late Qing predecessors, rendering his ladies with refined and detailed brushwork while employing a soft and elegant palette of colours. Xie also created bird-and-flower paintings, closely observing formal likeness and employing the boneless method—smearing colours rather than drawing lines to render the depiction. His works in this phase speak of his virtuosity of traditional Chinese painting.

The 1960’s saw a change in Xie’s art. He made a new approach to his bird-and-flower and landscape paintings. The works were mostly in the abbreviated style. His brush manner, ink techniques, form and coloration underwent a drastic transformation, marking the peak of his artistic career.

Xie developed a friendship with the artists Qian Shoutie (1897-1967) and Zhu Qizhan (1892-1996) whom he treated like his teachers. Their epigraphic style wielded influence over him, whose brush manner gradually turned bold and rustic. In particular, his flowers are delineated by thick and full lines akin to Wu Changshuo (1844-1927)’s seal script characters. Xie used carmine and rouge to render red petals, slashing strokes in dark ink to depict leaves, and dry strokes with dark dry ink to render vines and branches. Such depiction alludes to Qi Baishi (1864-1957)’s style of red flower and ink leaf. Xie’s bird-and-flower paintings are defined by their simplicity: usually only a trunk with two branches or a flower with a few leaves is depicted. His flowers assume geometric shapes such as angular lotus flowers, magnolia formed by triangles of varying sizes, and morning glories represented by two circles and a few dots. His animals are absurd and exaggerated in appearance. They are delineated with sharp-cornered outlines which add a sense of rustic simplicity.

Xie’s landscape paintings are usually expressive and entail mountains and rocks outlined in simple strokes. While Xie often mixed ochre, natural indigo and wet ink, he was adept at using stale ink as well as dark dry ink. They were used to highlight areas rendered in wet ink to form an interesting juxtaposition. Xie had a penchant for using ink washes or empty space extensively to create unexpected compositions. His expressive paintings may look abbreviated at first sight; a closer look reveals a multitude of contrasts: emptiness and fullness, boldness and lightness, dryness and wetness, coolness and warmth.

In his old age, Xie devoted entirely to the creation of Chinese painting. His coloration turned rich and brilliant unlike his soft palette back in his youth. Apart from brush-drawing, Xie would splash ink directly onto paper and use paper balls, bits of cloth or fingers to create a special visual effect. His plum blossoms, for instance, are rendered by fingers.

NGAN Yu Ting
Assistant Curator