Gao Qifeng (Chinese: 高奇峰; pinyin: Gāo Qífēng; 13 June 1889 – 2 November 1933) was a Chinese painter who co-founded the Lingnan School with his older brother Gao Jianfu and fellow artist Chen Shuren. Orphaned at a young age, Gao spent much of his childhood following Jianfu, learning the techniques of Ju Lian before travelling to Tokyo in 1907 to study Western and Japanese painting. While abroad, Gao joined the revolutionary organization Tongmenghui to challenge the Qing dynasty; after he returned to China, he published the nationalist magazine The True Record, which later fell afoul of the Beiyang government. Although offered a position in the Republic of China, Gao chose to focus on his art. He moved to Guangzhou in 1918, taking a series of teaching positions that culminated with an honorary professorship at Lingnan University in 1925. Falling ill in 1929, Gao left the city for Ersha Island, where he took students and established the Tianfang Studio.
In his painting, Gao blended traditional Chinese approaches with foreign ones, using Japanese techniques for light and shadow as well as Western understandings of geometry and perspective. Although he painted landscapes and figures, he is most recognized for his paintings of animals, particularly eagles, lions, and tigers. In his brushwork, he combined the vigour of his brother's technique with the elegance of Chen's. Gao taught numerous students, including Chao Shao-an and Huang Shaoqiang; he was particularly close to Zhang Kunyi, with whom he may have been romantically involved.
Gao was born Gao Weng (高嵡) in Yuangang Township, Panyu County, Guangdong, on 13 June 1889. The family was poor, and his father Boxiang died in 1895; his mother followed two years later. A sickly child, Gao was sent to live with a relative. One of six brothers, he ultimately became the ward of his brother Jianfu – ten years his elder – and followed him into the arts.
In his youth, Gao learned the water infusion and "boneless" painting techniques employed by Ju Lian. Sources disagree to the provenance of this knowledge. Gao Jianfu is known to have studied under Ju at his Xiaoyue Qin Pavilion, and thus he is often attributed as teaching them to his brother. Others have suggested that Gao Qifeng studied directly with Ju. No archival material has been found to support the latter scenario, and Ralph Croizier notes in his study of the Lingnan School that, if true, Gao studied under Ju only briefly.
Gao attended a Christian school by the age of fourteen, and later converted to Christianity. In the mid-1900s, he took an apprenticeship with Pastor Wu Shiqing, painting lampshades at his Yongming Zhai glass shop. He later worked with Wu's brother Jinghun to open another storefront. As an adult, he took the courtesy name Qifeng. On his early paintings, he used the art name Fei Pu (飞瀑); the seal with which he signed his paintings was marked Fei Pu Sketching.
In 1907, Gao travelled to Tokyo with his brother to further study art. While Jianfu was enrolled at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Gao became a student of Tanaka Raishō; he appears to have also drawn influence from artists such as Takeuchi Seihō and Hashimoto Kansetsu. All of these artists promoted the nihonga style, which blended Western techniques with Japanese ones. Through his studies, Gao learned Western approaches to perspective and sketching and became familiar with the works of the Kyoto school. He developed a style that blended these various influences, seeking to combine the naturalism of Western art with the lyricism and philosophy of traditional Chinese painting.
After returning to China in 1908, the Gao brothers moved to Nanhai. Gao Qifeng became a teacher at the Nanhai Middle School, while also learning psychology and sociology, holding that the truth, goodness, and beauty of art could better address the human condition with insight into the problems of society. Teaching art, Gao believed, would allow the transmission of a better understanding of ethics and social conditions. In 1908, he donated several paintings to a fundraiser for flooding victims in western Guangdong.
In Japan, the Gao brothers had joined the Tongmenghui, an organization established to overthrow the Qing dynasty. Gao Jianfu arranged the assassinations of several Qing leaders, with the death of General Fengshan attributed to a painter whom he had recruited; Gao Qifeng may also have been involved in this cell, and his friend and fellow revolutionary Wang Jingwei recalled him sleeping soundly in a room full of explosives. After the 1911 Revolution, the brothers were offered positions in the new Republic of China by Tongmenghui leader Sun Yat-sen, but declined.
Instead, the Gao brothers moved to Shanghai and established The True Record, a large-format magazine that consisted of pictures, paintings, cartoons, chronicle paintings, essays, reviews, and sketches. This nationalist magazine, subsidized in part by the new government, published seventeen issues between June 1912 and March or April 1913, with Gao Qifeng as the editor-in-chief. The Gaos believed that pictorials could best "arouse people's patriotic thoughts and support the order of social progress". In essays, the brothers called for the creation of a new approach to art, as well as improvements in art education; other parts of the magazine offered news and social commentary. They also decried the increasingly authoritarian Beiyang government.
Gao – writing with Xie Yingbo and Ma Xiaojin – published an article in 1913 implicating Provisional President Yuan Shikai in the assassination of nationalist leader Song Jiaoren. According to the writer Cai Dengshan, Yuan thus issued a warrant for their arrest, and Gao began a self-imposed exile in Japan. This claim is not supported universally among scholars, though Gao is thought to have spent time learning woodblock printing in Japan. As the decade continued and China's nascent democracy devolved into corruption and warlordism, Jianfu grew disenchanted with politics; the art critic Li Yuzhong suggests that Qifeng was likely influenced by his brother in this regard.
In the 1910s, the Gaos had established the Aesthetic Institute, a combined gallery, exhibition hall, and publishing house, in Shanghai. Through the bookstore, they sold reproductions of Chinese and Western paintings, including their own works. As the decade continued, Gao devoted himself exclusively to painting and teaching. He moved to Guangzhou in 1918 to lead the Art and Printmaking Department at the Class A Industrial School. He also established the Aesthetics Museum on Fuxue West Street. In 1925, Gao was made an honorary professor at Lingnan University (now part of Sun Yat-sen University). He was provided land upon which he built a studio; according to the curator Christina Chu, these were his most productive years.
Through the 1920s, Gao gained increasing recognition for his artwork, and he was frequently featured in The Young Companion, a bilingual pictorial magazine published in Shanghai. Prior to the construction of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, Gao was asked to contribute three of his works: Sea Eagle (海鷹), White Horse in the Autumn River (秋江白馬), and Lion (雄獅); during his lifetime, Sun Yat-sen had expressed a fondness for these paintings, none of which has survived.
Around 1929, Gao fell ill with pneumonia and removed himself from the city to recover, being admitted to the Zhujiang Nursing Home on Ersha Island in the Pearl River. After a year, Gao was released, choosing to establish the Tianfang Studio on the island to continue his work. There, he taught numerous students, with the seven most famous becoming known as the Tianfeng Seven. However, Gao remained sickly, and his productivity suffered; he only made one trip, to Guilin in 1931, to find new inspirations and materials.
In 1933, an exhibition of contemporary Chinese painting was scheduled in Berlin. Gao was selected as a government representative, and asked to travel to Shanghai for a preliminary meeting. On the ship from Guangzhou, Gao fell ill, and his fellow passenger Ye Gongchuo sought medical attention. Gao was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and after the ship arrived in Shanghai he was brought to Dahua Hospital.