Auction Information

Description

The payee, Mr. Hanqing, is Zhang Xueliang. Zhang Xueliang (June 3, 1901- October 14, 2001), with the courtesy name Hanqing and the courtesy name Yi'an. General of the Army, Han ethnicity, with ancestral roots in Haicheng, Liaoning. Currently, it is known that this is the only painting inscribed by Xu Beihong to Zhang Xueliang. It is difficult to find written records on the relationship between Xu and Zhang. So far, we have not found the second painting that Xu Beihong gave to Zhang Xueliang. The poem lines inscribed by Xu Beihong on the painting "Immediately" are very meaningful when compared to the background of Zhang Xueliang's experience at that time. "Immediately" was painted at the end of 1942 during the Anti Japanese War, when Xu Beihong was living in Guiyang and preparing to leave for Guilin. Marshal Zhang Xueliang has lost his personal freedom for 6 years due to the Xi'an Incident and was imprisoned by Chiang Kai shek in Tongzi, Guizhou. Xu Beihong presented a gift to Zhang Xueliang in the form of an immediate gesture, and under the constraints of form and momentum, it seemed to be ready to be unleashed, with metaphors all in the painting. In his hospitality, he excerpted two lines from Du Shaoling's "Twenty Miscellaneous Poems of Qinzhou": "Lamentation and contemplation of battle, standing tall towards the sky." He wrote, "Mr. Han Qing taught me, and at the end of the Renwu Festival, I mourned and wrote poems about Shaoling in Guiyang.". From the selected themes and the poems inscribed, it can be understood that Xu Beihong had a deep understanding of Zhang Xueliang's state of mind at that time.