Houses in a Bamboo Grove at the Foot of the Mountains

Qi Baishi is a major 20th-century Chinese painter who created a characteristic ink painting style of landscapes and figures, which made him famous in the 1920s and 1930s not only in China, but also Japan and Europe. The theme of a bent, barefoot fisherman with an averted face and a black cloak is one to which Qi Baishi returned many times. This picture is remarkable for the fine rendering of the fishing line coiled around the rod, which none of Qi Baishi’s followers managed to emulate. Owing in part to collector Vojtěch Chytil, who befriended the artist, the Czech Republic houses one of the largest collection of Qi Baishi’s artworks in the West – the National Gallery alone has more than a thousand of his paintings.