The Cityscape Genre in Oil Painting During the Republic of China (1912–1949)

The formation of the cityscape genre in oil painting, which fell on the short period of the Republic of China (1912–1949), is closely connected with the country’s transition to the Western modernisation model of development after its defeat in the Opium Wars. It was the time when China began to open up to the outside world and when modern, industrial cities started to appear there. As a rule, the artists who created works in this genre were trained in the West and were influenced by Western, realistic, and modernist trends in modern painting. The tradition of the Russian school of painting, which appeared in northwest China in the first quarter of the 20th century, was another source of borrowing.