Ma Jir Bo or Ma Jiabao (; 26 August 1927 – 8 December 1985) was a Chinese realism artist and oil painter. Ma is praised for his great portraitures, highly realistic texture-feeling still lifes and memory-rekindling landscapes of Hong Kong all that made him a leading oil painter of his era. Ma is regarded as 'the legacy of Classic Western Masters in the East'. During his career, he created roughly 300 oil paintings, some 50 watercolours, as well as some traditional Chinese ink paintings and Chinese calligraphies.
Life Ma was born in Haifeng, Guangdong Province. His father Ma Rixin () was a charcoal painter.The drawing, blending, of charcoal (compressed coal) on the surface of a canvas, paper, or other medium. The artist uses blocks or sticks, similar to graphite pencil lead, but looser (less controlled) to express themselves. Charcoal is a permanent once laid down and can be removed somewhat with erasers or fresh bread. His grandfather was a Scholar ("Wu Xiu-cai") in the Military Division"Wu Xiu-cai" a low rank official who passed the imperial military examination at the county level in the Ming and Qing dynasties. in the Qing dynasty and was decapitated for resisting the National Revolutionary Army. Ma Jir bo's mother was Zhu Yu-zhen. Not long after Ma's birth the family moved to Hong Kong where Ma learned Chinese ink painting with the famous painter Gao Jianfu (1879–1951)Michael Sullivan, Modern Chinese Artists – A Biographical Dictionary, (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2006), p 41. at the age of seven. At the age of thirteen he was first introduced to Li Tie-u (1870–1952) and Ma had his important apprenticeship on Western painting with him from 1949 to 1950.Michael Sullivan, Modern Chinese Artists – A Biographical Dictionary, (University of California Press : Berkeley, 2006), p 115. During the apprenticeship, both Ma and Li Tiefu lived together in a squatter in Diamond Hill, Kowloon, Hong Kong.Ma Jir-bo, ‘Li Tie-fu: The Person and His Paintings’ Wenweipo Daily, February 2, 1979. As a patriotic artist who sold his paintings to raise fund to support the Nationalist Revolution led by Dr Sun Yat-sen, Li Tiefu parted his patriotic ideology to Ma.Ma Jir-bo, ‘Li Tie-fu: The Person and His Paintings’ Wenweipo Daily, February 2, 1979; Helen Kwok, ‘The Art and Life of Ma Jiabao’ (1999) 2 Besides: A journal of Art History & Criticism 169 at p 171. By his influence, Ma was a loyal supporter of the Communist Revolution and he adopted Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830 to paint Just to Survive, 1955 to describe his approval of the Communist regime. Some of his earlier paintings are highly patriotic and political, such as Xia Jia Bang, 1961 and The Sea of Blood, 1961; as well as having a strong sense of social justice. A Christian Nun, 1966 and A Medical Doctor, 1971 are paintings of a social justice theme.
After Li Tiefu returned to the Mainland in the summer of 1950, Ma moved to Cheung Chau to study the way to paint in different light settings. He lived there for a few years before returning to the Hong Kong Island in 1966. Ma acquired his first student Wong Chung-Man.
In 1964, Ma's hidden life in Cheung Chau was discovered by the editor of the South China Morning Post and the article he wrote Fredric Kaplan, ‘Artist in Cheung Chau: Prefers Western to Chinese Style’, South China Sunday Post Herald, May 17, 1964. attracted the attention of the then Diplomat and Banker of Thailand Chali Yongsunthon, who later became a close supporter of Ma and acquired some of this works and later brought them back to Thailand.
Probably disappointed by the happening of the Cultural Revolution and his abhorrence of violence which occurred both in the Mainland and in Hong Kong, politics and social justice themes were not found in his post 1971 paintings.
Continuously through his life, Ma was dedicated to realism. By hanging An Artist Painting his Father, circa 1968 at the center of his art studio, he intended to remind all his students to refrain from abstractism. Probably influenced by Jean-François Millet, many of his portraits are of peasant farmers (cf. Peasant's Harvest, 1978), workers (cf. Old but Strong, 1963) and of ordinary people in lower social class (A Hooker Smooker's Resting Moment, 1976). "Painting to reflect society" – had been attributed to his style of painting and that he would not paint what the public do not understand.JR, ‘Painting to Reflect Society’, South China Morning Post, March 26, 1976, p 7 In 1970, Ma married to Madam Tam Wai-Mun, Alice (born 1939) who was one of his art students and had learned paintings from him for over two years before their marriage. They had a son, Lawrence Yan-kwok (born 1970), who has not chosen art as his career but rather to become a barrister in Australia and later in Hong Kong. Ma acquired a number of students in the late 1960s and early 1970s, among them Wong Wen-san (Wang Yun-shan), Yeung Yick (Yang Yi), Chan Yan-fu (Chen Ren-fu) and Chung Yiu (Zhong Yau).
At the same time as Ma's own style matured in the 1970s, his health started to deteriorate. Suffering from a lung disease, he was always short of breath and was difficult to manoeuvre. Hiking up the Peak and so as to paint the entire Victoria Harbour in 1974 was most notable as it is now part of the lost scenery of the rapidly developing Hong Kong to rekindle the public's collective memory.
In 1977, Ma was selected as the represent the Hong Kong art community representative to attend the prestigious National Day celebration in Beijing on 1 October. Before that, Ma was commissioned to paint two large portraits: one of Chairman Mao Zedong and another of Chairman Hua Guofeng by the then Director of Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong. At the National Day celebration, he was welcomed and greeted by Ye Jianying and Liao Chengzhi. The two portraits were hand-delivered by Ma to the Director in September 1977 and were displayed next to the national flag at the National Day celebration. They were never seen after 1977 and the whereabouts of the two portraits is a mystery now.Leung Sai-wah, ‘Ma Jirbo's Portraits of Chairman Mao’, Taikungpao Daily, October 7, 2010, p C2.
In the 1980s, his health further deteriorated and aggravated by the presence of kidney stones. Ma did not paint much and there were only two oil paintings produced in 1985. He died in the Queen Mary Hospital on December 8, 1985, aged 58, from the combination of his long ailing lung illness together with complication from a laser kidney stone surgery. He was survived by this mother, his wife and son.
Ma's attitude to life: Death is most frightening but even more frightening than death itself is the lack of great contribution to the human race. 死是最可怕的事但於人類不能作出偉大的貢獻那比死還更可怕 (Spring, 1975)
On 7 December 1985, a day before his death, he wrote in his diary: Painting is my lifelong devotion. I am not afraid of death as [death] is a natural course of things ... [You students] have to paint more frequently, don't be sad, I feel absolutely comfortable, because I have made myself a patriotic artist, translated from 畫是我的生命. 我不怕死，這是自然的規律 ...已後多寫畫，不要悲傷,我覺得完全舒服,因為我做了一個愛國畫家.
Works
Slive Seymore Slive, Rembrandt scholar and Director, Fogg Art Museum, Gleason Professor of Fine Arts, emeritus, Harvard University. See http://arthistorians.info/slives. once categorised Ma as a classic western artist - [E]arly in his career he acquired skill painting the subjects and working in the traditional style employed by a number of western artists, and from the beginning he had a fine sense of colour. It also appears that once he found his style and subjects that interested him he remained dedicated to them. He seems to have had no interest in experimenting or adopting any of the different approaches to painting used by innovative artists of his time. Certainly not 'innovative' enough to paint incomprehensible works that no public could understand, in his writing to remind himself, Ma offered the only surviving explanation on why he had such a strong hold on realism and abhorred the rise of abstractism because: An artist should deploy his paint brushes to benefit his country and his race and the whole world; and should not hold himself out as an artist if he paints "strange" [abstract and incomprehensible] paintings, translated from 畫家應該把畫筆去造福國家民族及全世界人類切不可做寫怪畫的空頭藝術家.
Art Critic Ian Finlay reckons that Ma Jir Bo's Western influences and inspirations are clearly evident - from Rembrandt and Constable to John Singer Sargent and Li Tie-fu, as well as realism, expressionism and socialist realism. Regardless of these influences, Ma retained his unique mark and lyrical colours.Ian Findlay, "A Mirror To The Past" (2010) 20 Asian Art News 80 - 81.
Portraits
Portraits are natural reflection of real people. The ability to achieve a true likeness was greatly valued until the mid-nineteenth century. However, once photographs became common, artists could use their skills to show something about the subject that no camera could match. In addition to showing the person, a great portrait suggests a history, personality, mood and feeling. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, 1507 captures the essence of the portrait in that it is compelling, and the view feels a connection to the person who is portrayed, yet it is also mysterious.R Kanz, Portraits, (Taschen : Koln, 2008), p 38 - 39; David G Wilkins (ed), The Collins Big Book of Art: From Cave Art to Pop Art, (Collins Design : New York, 2005), p 320.
Self-Portraits
For the viewer, self-portraits provide insight into the personality and possibly information about the situation which the artist was then in, that is, the inner life of the artist.
Unlike Rembrandt, Ma did not have his students copied his own self-portraits as part of their training; so there are a certain number of self-portraits – eight of them. His earliest one was in 1964 and the last one in 1983, two years before his death. His first self-portrait as a young but mature man was painted before he was interviewed by the press and seized this opportunity he wished to make known to the world that he was a Western artist who loved a peaceful world. The Self Portrait (in Celebration), 1966 draws substantial resemblance with Rembrandt's Self-portrait with Saskia (or The Prodigal Son with A Whore), 1635.
By 1636, Rembrandt had a successful venture in the Amsterdam's portraiture market and he had received commissions from the court in The Hague, set up an active studio, married burgomaster's daughter and moved into a prestigious home. By that time, Rembrandt had arisen up the social hierarchy and had various success in life. In 1636, he successfully sued Saskia's relatives for denying her part of her father's estate. In this Self-portrait with Saskia, both the artist and his wife appear to flaunt a proto-bohemian lifestyle, displaying their conspicuous and lavish consumption. His swaggering attitude and fanciful costume were seen as Rembrandt showing off his wealth and youthful bride. The blackboard on the wall, used to chalk up drinks, and the peacock pie alluding to costly pride were traditional elements in pictures of the Prodigal Son squandering his inheritance.See Mariet Westermann, Rembrandt, (Phaidon Press Ltd : New York, 2000), p 96 - 98.