About

Lang Shining (Guiseppe Castiglione) is one of my favorite Chinese-painting painters. Although he is Italian, judging from the achievements of Lang Shining's life, his main contribution is to boldly explore new ways of Western painting, melting Chinese and Western painting methods into one, and creating an unprecedented new painting method and new style, called Lang Shining's new style.

Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766, was born in Milan, Italy. He studied painting at an early age and joined the Society of Jesus in Genoa at the age of nineteen. In 1709, he went to Lisbon, Portugal. In 1714, he was sent by the Holy See to spread the gospel overseas. He arrived in China in 1715 (the fifty-fourth year of Emperor Kangxi), and at the end of the same year, he went to Beijing to serve in the Qing court with his painting skills. Castiglione served in the inner court for fifty-one years since the reign of Kangxi and died of illness in the thirty-one year of Qianlong. Emperor Qianlong decreed that "Fengchen Yuanqing" be given the title of servant.

The reason I documenting Lang Shining's painting for this assignment is not only because of my personal favoritism for Castiglione, the more is about the story of how a European artist under the language difficulties broke the traditional painting style in another country on the other half of the Earth. This only proves that art is borderless and can be transmitted to everyone who is truly enjoyed and hardly working on it. I believe his story and experience are more likely to cheer us no matter in art fields or in any other fields.