A Ren Bonian's work

"Birds & Flowers" painting by Wu Changshuo

Background:

As a direct consequence of the Opium War (1840-42), the treaty port of Shanghai emerged as one of the most cosmopolitan and commercially vibrant cities in nineteenth-century China. (1) English traders arrived first and were soon joined by an ever-increasing number of Western traders and missionaries, many of them French and American. Extensive concession areas located in the north of the old Chinese walled city were made available for British, French, and other foreign settlements.

From the 1850s on, each new social disturbance in the interior sent tens of thousands of Chinese refugees, including numerous wealthy landowners from the Jiangnan area, to Shanghai, seeking protection under the English and French flags. With this trend, professional artists immigrated to the city in search of patrons, and their presence added to a burgeoning art scene and the development of an eclectic urban aesthetic that came to be known as the Shanghai school of painting (haipai).

Ren Bonian (courtesy name Ren Yi, 1840-1896), among the most celebrated of the Shanghai school painters, arrived in the enclave in 1868 from his native Shanyin (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province) and rapidly emerged as one of the city's most prolific and popular artists.

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