Li Yishi was born born into a scholarly family in Soochow (Suzhou), Jiangsu province, China in 1886 and studied art at Qiushi Academy in Zhejiang. From 1907 until 1912 he trained at Glasgow School of Art and subsequently studied science subjects at the University of Glasgow from 1910–15. Returning to China, he embarked on a successful career in various academic institutions and promoted the study and practice of Western art.
Painter Li Yishi was born into a scholarly family in Soochow (Suzhou), Jiangsu province, China in 1886, the son of Li Baozhang, a painter in the late Qing Dynasty. Yishi first studied painting with his father. In 1903, Li left to study law abroad, but while in Japan, he abandonned his legal studies, finding his true passion for art and subsequently studying initially at the Qiushi Academy in Zhejiang.
In 1907 he moved to Scotland, where he studied oil and watercolour painting, drawing, anatomy, and costume history at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) until 1912, under the influential director, Frances H Newbery and tutor, Maurice Greiffenhagen. Yishi was the first Chinese student in Britain to graduate in Fine Arts. During this time, he learnt direct observation of the model and the use of shading to create an impression of three-dimensionality. He subsequently studied mathematics, physics, chemistry and other science subjects at the University of Glasgow from 1910–15. In particular, Li’s study of physics in Glasgow would serve as a crucial foundation in his understanding of science and art. According to Yishi, beauty was a discipline of science, and it could be achieved by providing certain fundamental elements. In an article on what constituted a good artwork, Li listed three elements which he thought were critical to our perception of beauty: the movements of the optical nerves, the movements of the subject, and the implication of meanings revealed through constant viewing. Li explained: ‘To depict a normal horse would just make it look like a specimen; people would not think it beautiful. By depicting a galloping horse, it is easier to move people’ (Yishi 1920, pp. 16–17). In addition to recognising motion’s mimetic effect, Yishi stressed the importance of movement to create a sense of beauty and lifelikeness.
Upon his return to China, Yishi first taught engineering at the Beijing (Peking) School of Engineering, but in 1918 he was hired as an instructor in the Painting Research Society, Beijing. Throughout his career Yishi promoted the study and practice of Western art by teaching oil painting at the Beijing Professional College of Art, Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, and Nanjing Central University, where he worked variously from 1918 to 1937. In 1920 he produced one of his most famous works, a life-size portrait of friend and fellow painter, Chen Shizeng (Museum of Chinese Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing). In 1922 he was the co-founder, alongside Wang Yuezh, Wang Ziyun and Wu Fading, of the Apollo Art Research Institute for the Promotion of Western Art in Beijing. Yishi became best known for his series Song of Everlasting Sorrow (1926–29), shown at the First National Exhibition in Shanghai in 1929. These thirty small-scale paintings, narrating episodes from Bai Juyi’s poem of the same title, revealed the influence of Western realism in the rendering of the human body through light, shadow and perspective, although it has been pointed out that, at times, Yishi’s figures appeared static and unnatural (Lam 2018, p. 77). Li Yishi died in China in 1942. There are no public collections in the West holding his work. His paintings and works on paper can be found in the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum and National Art Museum of China, Beijing.