Chinese Rose

Inscription: Beihong
Seal: “Beihong” (Round seal with relief characters)

Chinese Rose is Xu’s only flower painting from this period. The colors are elegant, and the brushwork is refined, rather like traditional “boneless” painting. However, he also utilized delicate portrayals of weak shadows and the delineation of leaf veins, so the painting technique could be considered watercolor with ink outlines. The painting has a somewhat Japanese sensibility.
Xu Beihong’s early work was primarily characterized by line painting in watercolor and ink. His watercolor painting technique was focused on color, light, and shadow, but he also used outlining from Chinese painting to strengthen the sense of texture. This blend of Chinese and Western techniques was rather common and generally favored at the time. Early calendar pictures used this method. Watercolor painting uses light and shadow, and modeling with color, but the medium also employs voids and modeling with water to give the colors a transparency. All of this is very similar to ink painting. Thus, it was easy for watercolorists to move toward ink painting and ink painters to move toward watercolor. In the twentieth century, many painters, such as Tao Lengyue, Xu Beihong, Li Jianchen, Fang Rending, and Li Keran, were adept at both watercolor painting and ink painting, and their ink paintings drew on watercolor techniques.
-Hua Tianxue, Xu Beihong’s Reforms of Chinese Painting