Sailing in Autumn

Sailing in Autumn (“Qiu Fan Tu”) is a painting created by Xugu (Zhu Huairen) in 1893. This is a work of the Shanghai School of painting, created with ink and light colors on paper as an album leaf. The artwork depicts a landscape, covered with the mist of an autumn day. However, unlike other Chinese landscape painters, Xugu did not follow the classical tradition of decorating the scenery with imaginary elements. Instead, he painted the landscape from an eyewitness perspective, using an impressionistic approach. The painting depicts a lowland, where only a few plants grow. The river flowing through this area is the central point of the picture, with a boat in the center where two people take a trip. Xugu used short, sketchy, and disconnected brushstrokes to paint the scenery, portraying the moment as he saw it. The artist also did not follow the traditional Chinese methods of depicting landscapes, based on organic forms. Instead, he applied dry ink to the foreground to portray objects clearly, and washed the background with diluted ink to create the effect of distance and mist. Xugu was a former soldier who turned to painting after the Taiping Rebellion and became a Buddhist monk. This influenced the uniqueness of his artistic language and the themes of his artwork. The painter’s use of light and color in Sailing in Autumn is reminiscent of the modernist experiments of the European impressionists. However, this approach was unconventional for the Chinese literati painters of the time, which gives the work its modern feel. Therefore, the painting can be seen as a precursor of modern art in China.