Portrait of a Zang Man: original oil on canvas by Jian Bai Xu, 1955

In our minds, some portraiture throughout art history had a contrived feel. We realize that that is so because art was a chronicle and because people are vain. The wonderful thing about the great impressionist movement, in art, was that contrivance was replaced with more honesty. In this painting of a man from the so-called Zang minority of China, who live in Sichuan and in the area around the Tibetan plateau, we see a real person. Like in most of the genre of portraiture from impressionist artists, it does not look posed or contrived. It simply looks like the artist has snapped a photograph of a man unaware that his picture was being taken. He just looks like he is sitting somewhere, lost in thought. It even gives one the impression that he is tired and just taking a rest to sit and think something out or just to be lost in his own thoughts for awhile.

Jian Bai Xu is one of the great Chinese impressionist artists who began painting in the 1940's.

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