Painter finds inspiration in frescoes
Xue Haitao is a painter, who combines ancient and modern painting skill, as well as Chinese and Western painting style to his works
Xue Haitao, an artist known for traditional Chinese painting, has been deeply inspired by Dunhuang frescoes. “I worked as a restorer of the Dunhuang frescoes from 1993 to 2005, and my job was to repair the damaged parts of the murals,” Xue recalled.
“Ancient mural restoration deals with flaking pigment curling, efflorescence, fading of colors and other damage caused by long-term natural infringement and improper conservation. It was urgent to carry out the protection work so as to restore the original look,” Xue explained.
Despite the poor working conditions thanks to the wind and sand of the Gobi Desert, Xue and his leaders and colleagues were consistent from beginning to end to finish the job.
“The climate there is dry and windy. Every night before sleeping, I had to shake down the sand from my bed, pockets and shoes,” he said.
Xue said, “However, I used to feel a sense of achievement after finishing restoration of a badly damaged mural. I love ancient mural restoration. Our work prolonged the life of the murals with their historical and cultural value better conveyed, and the traditional Chinese culture better inherited.”
The 12 years as a restorer of the Dunhuang frescoes was just the beginning of Xue’s story. After 12 years’ rooting in Dunhuang, Xue was transferred to the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
He began devoting himself to an art piece based on the murals on the walls of Sanqing Hall in the remote Yongle Gong Temple, also known as the Palace of Eternal Joy, in Shanxi province in 2012 in his spare time.
The murals, with a total of about 290 figures on them, depicts a scene where the congregation meets Yuanshi Tianzun, which is an etiquette story of Taoism. However, they were blurred with heavy mutilation.
Xue’s paintings based on the murals started with the west wall murals of them.
He spent the first half year doing research and going to museums and archives where he could study documents on the history of the paintings to understand the original composition, details and colors before devising a strict scheme for the painting based on the damaged murals.
Then, Xue used a silk scroll and color pigment to draw the painting, also called Xibitu of Chaoyuantu. It took him four years to complete the piece.
“The key of the restoration of these murals lies in details. Each stroke has to be responsible for the next in the painting. Especially, the each of the 290 figures in the murals has totally different facial expressions and clothes. A tiny mistake would ruin the murals. Thus, the mural restoration requires excelsior work, ”Xue said.
Being comparable with the Dunhuang frescoes, the murals of Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) in Yongle Gong Temple are among national traditional religious murals and enjoy important position in the history of Chinese mural art.
They are also considered the Chinese counterpart of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. They are not only 200 years older than Michelangelo’s 16th century ceiling in Rome, but also comparable in size and beauty.
Xue also completed a painting based on the east wall murals in August.
Xue, who was born into a family of artists, started learning Chinese calligraphy at 5, painting at 8, carving at 12 and seal carving at 16.
In 1988, he joined the then Central Academy of Arts and Design, which is now part of the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University.
Xue then learned Western oil painting at the prompting of his teachers and began to combine the techniques of traditional Chinese painting with Western oil painting.
In 2007, he went to the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia, for further studies.
And, since then, Xue has been developing his own painting styles and skills. Each of his paintings has a distinctive style.
In one of his ultrarealistic paintings called Tears of First Love, the girl’s strands of hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, wrinkles on her forehead, as well as the drops of tears in her eyes and also on her face, can be seen distinctly.
The piece, which took Xue two and half months to complete, is now with a national gallery in Italy.
Xue often goes to the African grassland. Taking sightseeing cars on the African grasslands, he observed and sketched the facial expression and body movements of the animals and turned them into ultrarealistic oil paintings after returning to his atelier. The paintings make people feel as if he were personally on the scene.
“I will not stop my ultrarealistic painting until my eyesight and physical strength cannot support the work, because the observation and concentration required is extremely consuming.”
For the past 14 years, Xue steps into his atelier at midnight and going to sleep at 4 am.
During the day, he now works as a lecturer at the School of Continuing Education at Renmin University of China.
“I enjoy the uneasy quietness of night. And I want to make full use of it on my paintings,” he says.
Xue is one of the few domestic artists that concurrently enjoy the titles of National First-Class Chinese Painting Artist, National First-Class Oil Painting Artist as well as National Fine Arts Artist.