Drawing inspiration from a city

Beginning life in the 17th century as a small shop selling paper and other implements used in Chinese ink work, Rongbaozhai has grown into a time-honored cultural brand. During Qi's life, it hosted exhibits of his work and helped him with sales. For many years, it also produced finely patterned paper he had commissioned. It owns a collection of his work, and is fully licensed to reproduce his paintings as woodblock prints.

The exhibition takes the form of a city walk that follows Qi throughout the course of a year to the restaurants where he often dined, the hutong alleyways, which led to the gardens, areas and homes of close friends where he would spend time, images of which he re-created with his brushes, capturing their ambience.

"This time we are not following the transformation of Qi's art in chronological order, as we normally do. We've put together a kind of painterly map, which shows the life he led in Beijing, how he made friends, and the anecdotes that inform his work," says Wang Yanan, the exhibition's co-curator and a researcher at the Beijing Fine Art Academy.

She says the exhibition demonstrates the way how Qi evolved from overlooked rural painter to one of the leading figures of the 20th-century Chinese art.

His early paintings not only illustrate his attempts to be accepted by Beijing's art circle, but also reveal his homesickness and lack of confidence.

Qi first visited Beijing in 1903 and later for a second time in 1917. He was impressed by its vigorous cultural scene, and was introduced to important figures. He tried to become one of them, but his work sold poorly.