Chapter 77 painting

Li Shutong is one of the pioneers of oil painting, advertising painting and woodcut in my country. He is also good at charcoal sketching, watercolor painting, traditional Chinese painting and so on.He was the first person to introduce Western painting ideas into China. His painting creations were mainly before he became a monk. Now there are "Self-Portrait", "Sketch Head", "Nude", "Watercolor", "Buddhist Painting" and other paintings. In the autumn of 1905, Li Shutong published articles such as "How to Cultivate Painting" and "A Brief Introduction to Watercolor Painting" in the "Lion Awakening" magazine run by Japanese overseas students, introducing Western painting to Chinese people. In 1906, Li Shutong entered the Western Painting Department of the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts to study. He was one of the earliest art students studying abroad in my country. On October 4, Japan's "National Shimbun" published an article "Qing Dynasty People Aspire to Western Painting", reporting Li's study at the Tokyo Fine Arts School: "After drinking a cup of 'shitcha', he explained that Kuroda was plastered all over the wall. The painter's nude paintings, beauties, landscape paintings, Nakamura and other paintings, etc., led me into the six-story room inside, and proudly introduced the sketches of apples that were painted on them. "It's a chic brushwork!" I Appreciate it. The maid listened and interjected: "It was painted in one go just this morning." Li Jun said modestly: "Yes," showing a row of white teeth." In the future, I will definitely visit your company, " The National News is a good newspaper.'”

In 1912, Li Shutong served as the literary editor of the "Pacific" newspaper, and was also in charge of supplements and advertisements.He opened up the "Western Painting Method" column in the newspaper's supplement, serially teaching methods of charcoal drawing and plaster sketching, and vigorously promoting Western art.He published a large number of fine arts advertising art works in the newspaper, so he is known as the first person of modern advertising art. Li Shutong has taught in Zhejiang First Normal School for 6 years.He changed the traditional teaching method of blindly copying, and set up a studio for students to draw plaster statues and models.In addition to teaching, he and Xia Mianzun served as instructors and published the "Baiyang" art magazine, which is the earliest education school magazine in modern my country.

Li Shutong is the first art teacher in my country who pioneered nude sketching. He began to introduce the training of nude sketching into the classroom in the second year of his teaching in the First Zhejiang Normal University.Wu Mengfei recalled: "When Li Shutong taught us painting, he first taught us sketching. At first, we used plaster models and still lifes, but after 1914, we switched to sketching human bodies." The first art teaching with real people as models was truly recorded by the lens , in the photo, a naked young man stands on a table with his back to the camera, facing the students sitting in a fan shape.

Li Shutong often takes students to sketch outdoors.At that time, outdoor sketching was still a new thing. Once, students Li Hongliang and Zhang Lianhui went to sketch by the canal. A policeman saw them setting up a tripod to draw, and became suspicious. He thought they were surveying and drawing maps in private, and asked: "Where are you from?" Zhang Lianhui thought he was asking about his hometown, and replied, "Dongyang (a county name in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province)." The police heard that they were from "Dongyang", and if they were facing an enemy, they would take them to the police station.Li Hongliang hurriedly explained, but the police still didn't let them go. Fortunately, a military policeman came over and helped them convince the police after listening to the two's explanations.

Once again, Li Hongliang went to Suzhou alone to sketch. He was stopped by the police as soon as he got off the train.The police found a few toothpaste-like things that they had never seen before in his package. After squeezing a little, they found that it was a greasy, soft and colored paste, so they became more suspicious and squeezed all the oil paints. out.In order to find out what it was, he had to squeeze other paints, so Li Hongliang was in a hurry and made a fuss to the station master's office, only the remaining few paints survived.Gein's oil paints at that time had to be purchased by the school from abroad, which was hard-won.

In 1918, when Li Shutong converted to Buddhism, he donated all his oil paintings, sketches and watercolors to Beiping Academy of Fine Arts.The principal of the school did not appreciate Li's works, so he piled these precious paintings in the snow in the school. After a winter of rain and snow, the teacher Chu Xiaoshi only took out one flower work, and the rest were destroyed.According to another theory, Li's oil painting department was stolen, and the painting in Chu's collection was dropped on campus, and he picked it up. In the 1930s, Uchiyama Wanzo once commented in the article "Hongyi Lawyer": "...until today, the attainments of oil painting are still unmatched by him."