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I have been reading the chapter on Xu Beihong in the book, BETWEEN TWO CULTURES - the book was published by the Yale University Press for the Metropolitan Museaum of Art, NY. The book discusses several of the most important 20th c. Chinese painters.
According to the book, Xu Beihong spent 8 years in Europe being classically trained by Francois Flemeng, , Arthur Kampf, and Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, all Western masters of anatomical (portrait) painting.
Because of this intense study, Xu was able to master the exactness of Western anatomical form. This might explain the near identical nature of both paintings and also explains why most copies of Xu's horse paintings are so easy to spot....it takes tremendous training and skill to paint the anatomy of the horse correctly.
The chapter goes on to explain that even with his training, painting in tradition Chinese brush presented a challenge that required Xu Beihong to repaint multiple copies of the same scene
Xu Beihong is quoted as saying "although I expended much effort, I found that some of the horses' hooves were still not quite correct. Chinese painting is different from (Western) oil painting, which can be scraped off and repainted. Thus my method was to repeat the composition many times."
The chapter provides the example of Xu's painting, Man With Horse (1924), which hangs in the Xu Beihong Memorial Museum. The final painting was his 17th attempt.
Perhaps my painting was one of many attempts.
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