The Roar of the Night

With their early training under the Geshan school of painting, the Gao brothers at first specialized in garden creatures such as birds and insects. They turned to larger beasts such as tigers, hawks, and primates upon influence from Japanese painting of their time, in which the beasts’ ferocity was highlighted against backgrounds of snowy scenes or moonlit nights. Gao Qifeng adopted a more naturalistic approach in the depiction of tigers when compared with his elder brother Gao Jianfu (see The Sickly Tiger), as evident in the present piece.