Flying a Kite

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. This painting of a young shepherd lying on the back of a water buffalo is typical for its humorous theme, innovative rendering of landscape elements, such as the trees in the background, and colours that are relatively distinct and unusual for ink painting. 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 hundred of his paintings.