Qi Baishi Flower and Bird Chinese Painting Print – Kingfisher Water

Qi Baishi's kingfisher hovers over its water: the bird's jewel tones — turquoise, rust, white — rendered in the master's direct, colorful manner, lotus leaves below, a fish presumably holding its breath. The kingfisher is the pond's great drama — the dive, the catch, the flash — and Qi Baishi's version has the peasant-master's eye for the moment: the hover before the plunge. It is the pond's small drama, painted with a peasant's eye and a poet's hand, the hunt's bright second.

The kingfisher's color is the spectacle: bright against the lotus's green — the turquoise's flash, the rust's warmth — the bird's compact form drawn with decisive strokes, the hover's tension. The water is suggested with the master's economy — a few lines, and it ripples, the surface's truth. The lotus provides the setting, the leaves' green architecture; the unseen fish provides the tension, the drama's other half.

Pond dramas suit sunrooms, studies, anywhere water is the theme — the hunt's bright moment. It arrives as the unmounted core only, with no frame or scroll, ready for framing to your taste. A jewel-bright Qi Baishi.