Fu Baoshi (1864-1957)

Fu Baoshi was born in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province. A Chinese painter and art historian.  He was one of the last great literati of scholar-amateur painters in China and formed a link between the traditional elite literati painters and the new artists of the 20th century.  He also combined traditional methods with Western techniques and concepts, which earned him the respect of admirers of the classical tradition, as well as popularity with those of modern outlook.  For the support he received from the new regime, Fu Baoshi reciprocated by, among other things, painting pictures that made reference to the poems of Mao Zedong.  Fu is particularly renowned for his landscape paintings, in which he introduced new methods of depicting mountains, and for his images of people.