More than 80 of Xu Beihong’s works are currently being displayed at Beijing-based Yanhuang Art Museum, the first privately run art museum in China. The exhibition opened on March 8 and runs through April 10.

Xu Beihong (1895-1953) is famous both for his traditional Chinese ink paintings and his Western-style oil paintings. As a young man, he was one of the first Chinese artists to search for new forms of artistic expression reflecting China's troubled encounters with the modern world.

"Xu Beihong brought western art to China and initiated a renaissance in Chinese fine art. In one sense he is more important as an educator than a painter," said Professor Huang Xiaofeng of the China Central Academy of Fine Art.

Prominent pieces of Xu’s works that reflect his art life are included, such as Horses and Groom, oil paintings Sound of the Flute and Self-Portrait, and ink paintings Joining Forces in Tokyo, Galloping Horses and Jiufang Gao.

Chinese artist Xu Beihong excelled at capturing the vivid expressions, free will, endurance and vigor of galloping horses.

Liao Jingwen, Xu’s wife and the curator of Xu Beihong Musuem in Beijing, thinks highly of this exhibition. “The exhibits on display are all from Xu Beihong Museum. All of them are authentic pieces.” said the 86-year-old lady.

Born in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, in 1895, Xu Beihong grew up in an artistic family and showed enthusiasm and talent towards painting at early age. In 1916, he studied French and sketching in Shanghai where he got to know the scholar and political reformer Kang Youwei whose idea had great influence on Xu. In May 1917, he studied art on a scholarship in Japan and returned to China at the end of the year. Upon returning, Xu accepted a teaching post at the Peking University, the birth place of New Culture Movement of which democracy and science were the core values. In March 1919, Xu traveled to Paris for further study. The following year, he became a pupil of Dagnan Bouveret who had been a pupil of Corot in the 19th Century. There, he embraced realism.

“One theme of Xu Beihong’s works is the beautiful nature, and the other focuses on human beings,” said Xu Qingping, the painter's son and now dean of the School of Arts in Renmin University, “My father wishes his art works can express feelings of human beings. He hopes his works are so touching that even the God would be moved.”

Xu returned to China in 1927 and, from 1927 to 1929, held many posts at institutions in China, including as a teacher at the South China Art Academy in Shanghai, which he co-founded, and at the National Central University (Nanjing University) in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

Xu Beihong was more than an artist. He’s a patriot. During the Sino-Japanese War in the first half of the 20th century, Xu Beihong travelled throughout the Southeast Asia to host exhibitions to raise money to support war-relief efforts.