Bright colors splash along scrolls, depicting images of swimming shrimp, scuttling crabs, bulging frogs and crouching roosters. Lotuses and peonies bloom serenely in meticulously drawn cauldrons. A rushing stream of water flows between majestic landscapes of mountains and lush forests.

These scenic paintings are part of a special exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center: “Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Painters in 20th Century China.” Initiated and organized by Xiaoneng Yang, the Cantor Arts Center’s curator of Asian Art, the exhibition features over 110 works of art from the “Four Great Masters of Ink Painting”: Wu Changshuo (1844–1927), Qi Baishi (1864–1957), Huang Binhong (1865–1955) and Pan Tianshou (1897–1971).

The opportunity to see so many of the four master painters’ pieces within the same gallery is one of the exhibit’s key attractions.

“Most of the works are the first time to be seen in the U.S.,” Yang wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “Actually, you even cannot see so many masterpieces of these artists at a single exhibition within China.”

Together, the paintings of these four artists range from the end of the Imperial Era to the founding of the Republic to the Cultural Revolution. The paintings have a distinctive aura of national pride and tumult.

“These paintings reflect the political struggles and the economic changes of the time,” said Richard Vinograd, professor of Asian art, whose role in the exhibition included writing the introduction and several lead essays to the exhibition’s catalog, as well as leading a team of students to assist with the translation of some of the painting titles.

“In other words, they were trying to find a way to utilize the inheritance of the past to create an art form that was suitable to the new nation’s fate and to a new society that was looking forward to a national future,” he said.

The ink masters all started painting relatively late in their lives in their sixties. They dedicated their lives to mastering the arts of calligraphy and seal-carving before moving onto painting. Their paintings reflect years of meticulous study and keen observation.

The artists’ emphasis on detail is particularly evident in their renditions of crustaceans.

“Qi Baishi spent years studying shrimp in a bowl,” said Judy Rino, one of Cantor Center’s docents. “He didn’t just study their locomotion; he looked for that which animated the shrimp the spirit of the shrimp.”

It is this “spirit” that makes the paintings so lively. The paintings are more than ink and color on paper they are a blend of traditional ideals, rich storytelling and artistic experimentation. One painting in particular by Pan Tianshou depicts two skulking vultures on a precipice, a drastic break from the graceful harmony that is normally associated with traditional Chinese landscape painting.

“The upside-down precipice that the vultures are perching on gives off a feeling of instability,” Rino said. “The painting was actually confiscated by the Red Guard, because they said it was a treacherous painting the birds represented spies.”

Other paintings show the evolution of the painters’ styles, to produce an effect that was simultaneously faithful to traditional values, but also reflected an innovative look at reality.

“In traditional landscape paintings, there’s a clear path that connects the foreground with the mountains in the background,” Rino said. “However, in this painting [Discourse on Heaven, Earth and Man], there’s no path at all. It’s hidden and mysterious.”

The emerging chaos among the paintings also reflects the darker times of political struggle and cultural upheaval.

“I like the traditional style better,” one of the tour guide group members chimed when Rino asked her which style of painting she preferred. “I like serenity.”

Despite the somber nature of the paintings, they are still an important legacy of China.

“It is an important episode in Chinese history and helps fill out a broader and more complete picture of Chinese culture from the modern era from the 20th Century and now on into the 21th Century,” Vinograd said.

The loan exhibition will be on display at the Cantor Arts Center until its closing on July 4. Yang said the pieces will return to China and be on display at the Shanghai Exhibition Center after they leave Stanford.