Xu Beihong was born in Yixing in Jiangsu Province in 1895. Since the age of six, he learnt the classics, portrait painting, and calligraphy from his father, Xu Dazhang. In 1919, he obtained a government scholarship to study at the Academie Julian and the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. His experience in Europe provided him with a firm foundation in the Western understanding of light, colour and form. Xu’s art was inspired by a wide range of sources but essentially it was rooted in the pursuit of realism. Xu Beihong's strong foundation in life drawing is evident here in the portrayal of the human figures. The depiction of an old Chinese man with a boy painted using the medium of Chinese ink and watercolour, shows that the style is clearly founded on Western realism. This painting could have been a preparatory painting for a much larger one.
