Male Nude

Inscription: Made in Paris early in the Jiazi year (1924). It was certainly my poorest time in Europe. Beihong.
Seal: “Student Xu from Jiangnan” (Square seal with relief characters)

The Jiazi year was 1924, when Xu Beihong was 30. He was still in Paris studying painting, and because of political changes in Beijing, his government scholarship was suspended. He often went hungry, unable to afford enough to eat. In June of that year, there was a hailstorm that broke the glass ceiling of his studio. He borrowed money from a number of places, but he couldn’t scrape together enough to fix it. He eventually bridged the gap with the help of Zhao Songnan, China’s ambassador to Germany.
-Wang Zhen, The Extended Chronicle of Xu Beihong