Blooming Life

Lin Dachuan was a pioneering figure in oil painting renowned in both China and Japan, and an important founder of modern Chinese oil painting. In 1932, he went to Japan to study, apprenticing under the famous oil painter Fujishima Takeji. He researches on Impressionist techniques of colors and integrating them with the brushstrokes and artistic interest of Chinese painting. Blooming Life is a work from his mature artistic period. The painting features simple brushstrokes, concise forms, and bright colors that complement each other, revealing a sense of frank vitality. The work continues the tradition of “expressing emotion through depiction” from Chinese literati painting in a “sketching from life and completing spontaneously” manner. In the painting, flowers are juxtaposed with paint tubes and palettes, allowing the “depicted nature” and the “act of painting” to reflect each other, revealing the mutual generation of natural life and artistic life.