On View
Not on viewObject number2011.75
Beauty Against Willows
Artist
Xie Zhiliu
(Chinese, 1910 - 1997)
Date1946
Mediumink and color on paper
Dimensionsimage: 51 1/2 × 21 1/2 in. (130.8 × 54.6 cm)
mount: 59 1/2 × 27 3/8 in. (151.1 × 69.5 cm)
mount: 59 1/2 × 27 3/8 in. (151.1 × 69.5 cm)
Credit LineGift of Albert and Betty Chang, retirees of Upjohn Company and Kalamazoo Valley Community College
Exhibition History"The Chinese Scholar's Brush: Works from the Albert and Betty Chang Collection," KIA Joy Light Gallery of Asian Art (May 7 - Aug. 27, 2011).
"Lasting Legacy: A Collection for Kalamazoo," Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, Michigan (Sep. 6, 2014 - Jan. 4, 2015).Label TextFrom the Shanghai area, Xie Zhiliu was a noted painter of traditional styles, excelling in landscape, bird-and-flower, and figure painting. In 1942,
Xie Zhiliu studied and cataloged the Buddhist cave paintings in remote Dunhuang, near China’s Mongolian border. The use of bright colors on this female figure, painted four years after his Dunhuang visit, reflects the lessons Xie learned from those 1,000- to 1,500-year-old cave paintings in the Gobi Desert. While the title, Beauty Against Willows, references the subject’s physical appearance, her blue sash comments on her admirable character and class.
[From Cobalt to Indigo: The Power of Blue in East Asia, March 28 - July 12, 2026]
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From the Shanghai area, Xie Zhiliu was a noted painter of the traditional style, excelling in the genres of landscape, bird-and-flower, and figure painting.
In 1942, Xie Zhiliu studied and cataloged the Buddhist cave paintings in remote Dunhuang, near China’s Mongolian border. The use of bright colors on this female figure, painted four years after his Dunhuang visit, reflects the lessons Xie learned from those 1,000- to 1,500-year-old cave paintings in the Gobi Desert.
