Li Qiujun

Li Qiujun (李秋君) was born in 1899 in Zhenhai, Zhejiang province, into a socially prominent family, and by several accounts practiced calligraphy, painting, chess, and the zither from childhood. She studied first under the painter Wu Shujuan and later under Zhang Daqian, one of the most influential Chinese painters of the twentieth century, and developed a landscape style rooted in classical Chinese painting while also producing copies and reinterpretations of historical works, including scenes after the Tang-dynasty painter Yan Liben. In 1934 she and a group of fellow artists founded the Chinese Women's Calligraphy and Painting Association in Shanghai, an organization described by the China Cultural Center in Brussels as the first Chinese artist group organized by women, and she is separately cited, in a single lower-confidence source, as a member of the China Artists Association and a painter affiliated with the Shanghai Chinese Painting Academy.

Sources agree that Li Qiujun died in the early 1970s but disagree on the exact year, variously reported as 1971, 1972, or 1973. No source located gives a precise death date or place. This profile follows the strongest cluster of sources, which points to 1973, but that should be read as the best available estimate rather than a confirmed fact.

A note on naming: some internal records pair her name with "Gu Qingyao." A scholarly article on the Republican-era Shanghai art scene discusses Li Qiujun and Gu Qingyao as two separate, prominent women artists active in the same city and period, not as one person under a combined name, and no auction house, museum, or scholarly source found identifies Gu Qingyao as an alternate name for Li Qiujun herself. This profile treats Li Qiujun as the documented, auction-market identity.

No exact, attributable critic quotations naming Li Qiujun in a major outlet were located. What can be documented is institutional and scholarly framing: the China Cultural Center in Brussels presents her landscape work as part of its exhibition program, and academic writing on Shanghai's Republican-era art world, including a Cambridge University Press article on the city's urban art scene, places her among a recognized circle of women painters active in Shanghai in the same period, alongside artists such as Gu Qingyao. Her standing rests more on this institutional and organizational record, particularly her role in founding a women's art association, than on a body of independent critical writing that has surfaced to date.

Li Qiujun's documented auction high is Revising Books in the Northern Qi Dynasty, After Yan Liben, a handscroll in ink and color on paper, which sold at Christie's Hong Kong in 2014 and is reported by MutualArt as her record price at USD 392,073. The exact sale date and the hammer price in local currency are not confirmed in available sources. The same work had previously appeared at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 1993. Beyond this top result, MutualArt reports realized prices reaching up to USD 392,073 for works on paper and up to USD 80,557 for paintings, indicating a market with a small number of higher-value results and a longer tail of more modest sales. No current gallery or estate representation could be confirmed, and no catalogue raisonne has been identified.

Li Qiujun's auction footprint is thin and concentrated in Chinese classical-painting sales at Christie's and Sotheby's in Hong Kong, so any single result, including her 2014 record, should be read against a short and uneven sales history rather than a deep or continuous one. There is no catalogue raisonne and no confirmed foundation, gallery, or estate representation, which puts extra weight on auction-house provenance and cataloguing when evaluating a given work. Collectors should also be aware that even basic biographical facts, including her exact death year, are not fully settled across published sources, and treat any single stated date with appropriate caution.