Lingnan School of Art

Chao Shao-An
Gladioli

If you are a frequent visitor to Asian Art Museums in San Francisco or Hong Kong, you are probably quite familiar with works from Chao Shao-An (趙少昂), Henry Wo Yue-Kee (胡宇基) and their peers. Master Chao lived in Hong Kong for a long period of time and has traveled to USA to give lectures at universities. Thus he had a big influence on many Chinese painters in Hong Kong and USA from the younger generations, including Master Wo, who is active and known for his lotus-themed paintings, among his other favorite subjects. And it is easy to understand what makes their style of painting appealing to the Western audiences, for example, the use of bright colors. One could see the same influence from European impressionist paintings. Another characteristics of this style, called the Lingnan school, is the use of many varying brush strokes.

Wo Yue Kee
  Lotus pond at night

The word Lingnan literally means south of the Nan mountains, which separates Central and South China. And indeed, originally most painters of this style were from that area but of course that is no longer the case. It is interesting that the originators of this style (高劍父、高奇峰、陳樹人 also known as "Two Gao, One Chen") was not keen on using this name. They actually preferred a more descriptive term that made it clear they were trying to revolutionize the tradition that had become stagnant since the Ching dynasty by combining old and new ways of painting from Japan and the West. In addition to the aforementioned Chao Shao-An, other Lingnan masters of his generation includes Guan Shanyue (關山月) , Li Xiong-Cai (黎雄才) and Yang Shanshen (楊善深)

Paintings (1, 2) in the style of Lingnan School are available for purchase at the RootDragon marketplace.