Old Pine and Cypress on West Mountain

Inscription: Old pine and cypress on West Mountain. Presented to Mother Chen on her birthday by Xu Beihong in the seventh month of the Wuwu year (1918)
Seal: “Seal of Xu Beihong” (Square seal with incised characters)

This work is essentially an ink and color landscape in the modern sense, and not a shanshui painting in the traditional sense. Xu employed single-point perspective, and contours without craggy brushwork. He depicts a colored sky to give a sense of realism and modulates the colors and textures of pine and cypress tree trunks. However, the work used ink lines, so it still falls within the scope of line painting in watercolor and ink.
-Hua Tianxue