| dc.description.abstract | Feng Runzhi (1851-1942), born in Panyu, was a famous Chinese figure painter in the Guangdong region during the late Qing and early Republican periods of China. Feng was adept at both Chinese and Western styles of painting. His early paintings were influenced from figure painters in the Fujian area, including the prominent Hua Yan (1682-1756), while his later figure paintings were increasingly characterized by the style of Qian Hui’an (1833-1911), another eminent painter in the latter stage of the Shanghai School, after Feng had imitated and mastered the techniques employed in their artworks. Around the time of the 1911 Revolution, Feng was committed to the cause of illustrated newspapers in Guangdong, joining other fellow artists in the illustration and publishing work for illustrated newspapers like Shishi Huabao (Journal of Current Pictorial 時事畫報), Shangqi Huabao (賞奇畫報), and Zhenxiang Huabao (The Truth Record 真相畫報), and leaving a rich legacy of portraits of society in the late Qing Dynasty. Feng also helped create monthly calendar posters for companies like Watsons and made contributions to the development of lithographed newspapers and the education of painting. In his later years, he returned to the tradition, participating in activities related to art societies such as the Chinese Painting Society and the Society of Literary, Calligraphy, and Painting. After he moved to Macau, the style of his figure paintings had some influence on the local painting scene.
This essay aims to contribute to building a more comprehensive picture of Feng Runzhi’s life and facilitate a deeper understanding of his illustrations of certain themes, on the basis of previous research on this topic and additional materials, which includes, most importantly, the complete set of Journal of Current Pictorial, jointly compiled by the Guangdong Museum and Sun Yat-Sen Library of Guangdong Province and published in ten volumes in 2014. The first chapter of this paper is a summary of Feng’s life, including how he became proficient in both Chinese and Western painting techniques, his involvement in the development of illustrated newspapers, and his shift towards a more traditional painting style and more conservative values in his later years. The second chapter centers around Feng’s most significant paintings of foreign-related events, analyzing their characteristics and tracing the possible sources of inspiration for the images. The third and final chapter explores the themes of Feng’s representative illustrations of foreigners and foreign-related events. These themes include foreign aggression, the progressive image of westerners and the western revolutionary wave, and so on. At the same time, this chapter also analyzes Feng’s depiction of the foreign relations of the late Qing Dynasty, as well as his methods used in constructing images for news events. | en_US |