Skating was created in 1946. That year, Ai Zhongxin, who had just passed thirty years old, was invited by his mentor Xu Beihong to come to Beiping. He left his hometown of Shanghai to go north, and serve as an associate professor at Beiping Art College. At that time, Beiping Art College brought many famous artists together, including Xu Beihong, Wu Zuoren, Li Zongjin and Feng Fazhen. The protagonist in Skating was a good friend of Ai Zhongxin – Wu Zuoren’s wife, the famous female painter Xiao Shufang. In Ai Zhongxin’s work, Xiao Shufang and her daughter skated hand in hand, absolutely calm and collected, their extended body language displaying the beauty of athletics. Ai Zhongxin is a master of painting snow scenes. Although Skating does not show a large area of white snow, it clearly depicts the texture of the ice surface, delicately illustrating another side of the northern winter. Skating is innocent, pure, and filled with a sense of movement. Characters in the distance are also vividly depicted, with some skating and sprinting, and there are groups of playful hockey players. This winter picture of Beiping in the old days depicts life in the city at that time as relaxed and romantic.

Ai Zhongxin is an outstanding representative of the second generation of Chinese oil painters in the 20th century, especially as a pioneer committed to promoting realism. He advocates artistic creation based on life, emphasizing sketching and observation. His oil paintings are diverse in subject matter, rigorous in composition, rich in color, and concise in brush strokes. They are unique in modern Chinese oil painting circles. Li Keran called it “Chinese oil painting with a painterly quality of inkwash.”

(Edited by Lijie Wang & Miao Zijin, 2019)