Portrait

Xu Beihong and Zhang Ji were very good friends, and after the establishment of the People’s Republic, this portrait of Zhang Ji hung in Xu’s studio.
Zhang Ji (1882-1947) was from Cang County in Hebei. He was a noted politician during the Republican period. In 1897, he studied at the Lianchi Academy in Baoding. In 1899, he studied abroad at Waseda University in Japan. In 1903, he returned to China and founded The Citizen’s Newspaper, The Jiangsu Newspaper, The Citizen’s Daily, The People’s Newspaper, New Century Weekly, and other pro-revolution publications with friends.