Li Tiefu

Li Tiefu was born in Heshan, Guangdong, China, in 1869; both Wikipedia and askART give the more specific month of October 1869, though no source confirms an exact day. He left China to study art in the United States, where he was later elected a member of the National Academy of Design in New York; no further details of his course of study or an exact return date to China are confirmed in available sources.

Alongside his painting, Li Tiefu was active in revolutionary politics, helping to raise funds in support of Sun Yat-sen and the Xinhai Revolution that ended imperial rule in China. He is widely credited as one of the first Chinese artists to receive full academic training in Western oil painting and to bring that training back to China, where he went on to teach and to produce portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. The bulk of his surviving paintings is reported to be held by the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. He died on 16 June 1952, a date given explicitly by both Wikipedia and askART; the death year of 1952 is further corroborated by Christie's and MutualArt.

Li Tiefu's standing in China rests on his dual identity as artist and revolutionary. A 2019 China Daily feature on an exhibition of his work at the Art Museum of the Beijing Fine Art Academy, titled "A truly revolutionary painter," framed him around both his painting and his patriotism. Biographical summaries describe him as having been "hailed as one of the most important Cantonese artists of the 20th century" at the Guangdong Art Centennial Exhibition, staged at the Guangdong Museum of Art, though the exact year of that survey is not confirmed in available sources. A CAFA Art Museum exhibition on Chinese artists who trained in France, which included his 1918 painting "Musician," also recounts praise for his technique from contemporaries such as Xu Beihong, Lu Sibai, and Hu Shanyu, though these are recorded as artists' remarks rather than reviews from a named critic, and no exact, independently verifiable critic quotation could be located for this profile.

Li Tiefu's market is thin and only partially documented in public sources. Artprice, Invaluable, and MutualArt each show ongoing auction activity for the artist, but this review could not confirm a specific record price, work title, auction house, or sale date behind any of that activity, so no auction record is presented on this page. Works that do reach the market, such as still lifes and landscapes cataloged by Christie's, tend to be sold through Asian art specialist sales rather than through a dedicated gallery or estate, and no current gallery or estate representation for Li Tiefu could be identified. Because much of his output is reported to sit in institutional hands, particularly the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, the pool of works available to collectors at any given time is small.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Li Tiefu, and his auction history is not fully transparent in public databases: multiple databases show auction activity, but no specific record price or lot could be confirmed as of this review. Most of his known surviving output is reported to sit in institutional collections, chiefly the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, which limits both supply and the amount of independently verifiable sale data available to buyers. Collectors considering a work attributed to Li Tiefu should lean on established Asian art auction houses and museum-affiliated scholarship for provenance and attribution, given the absence of a catalogue raisonne or a dedicated representing gallery.