Flowers in a Glass Vase

Huang Xianzhi, a pioneer of fine arts education in the People’s Republic of China, studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in his early years. Since 1941, he taught successively at colleges such as National Central University, Nanjing University, and Nanjing Normal University. In 1961, Huang Xianzhi and his family moved to No. 12 Chibi Road in Nanjing, where he converted a room into a studio and personally planted roses, chrysanthemums, and other flowers in the courtyard for his creations. Flowers in a Glass Vase was created shortly thereafter. In his work, the precise modeling typical of Western realism is blended with the freehand brushwork and artistic conception of Chinese painting—the outlines of the vase, flowers, stems, and leaves are clear and rhythmic; the background is blurred into a subtle, flowing space, with the empty space seeming to breathe gently. The colors are layered with exquisite refinement and decorative quality, harboring a latent sense of growth within their tranquility. This demonstrates the artist’s precise control over form and connotation, and it is also a conscious exploration of the then widely discussed issue of “nationalizing oil painting” in China.