What Does Chen Danqing’s $23 Million Oil Painting The Shepherd Depict?

1. Basic Information of the Painting

Chen Danqing’s The Shepherd, sold at auction for 161 million RMB, was completed in 1980. It is an oil painting on wood panel, measuring 52.3cm × 78.6cm. It is the last finished and most influential piece among the seven works of the Tibetan Series.

2. Content of the Painting

Beneath a rough stone wall on the highland, a Tibetan shepherd couple embrace and kiss:

• The man’s back faces the viewer. His sturdy, sun-darkened bare shoulders lean down to kiss the woman. A thick Tibetan robe drapes over his shoulders, radiating raw, rugged vitality.
• The woman leans sideways against the stone wall, a shy smile on her face. Her hands rest lightly on the man’s chest, her posture slightly stiff and clumsy. Her red top, Tibetan silver ornaments and dark long skirt fully reproduce the daily costumes of Tibetan people.
• The background consists of a crude earthen-stone wall, scattered shepherd’s supplies in the corner, and faint silhouettes of sheep in the distance. It features a minimalist highland wilderness setting, free of grand backdrops, slogans or deliberately beautified embellishments.

1. The Original Inspiration for the Work

Chen Danqing witnessed this scene personally on the streets of Lhasa. His diary records: While strolling at dusk, he saw a shepherd couple leaning close and kissing on the street. Their pure, unadorned sincerity touched him deeply, and he resolved on the spot to capture this fleeting moment on canvas.

II. The Core Message Conveyed in Chen Danqing’s The Shepherd

1. Breaking the dogma of the era and returning to authentic human nature

Art creation during the Cultural Revolution was rigidly bound to grand revolutionary narratives and perfect, heroic archetypes. Paintings were only permitted to celebrate political themes; private human emotions and romantic affection between men and women were entirely forbidden creative subjects.

The Shepherd is the first oil painting created after the founding of the People’s Republic of China to frankly depict an ordinary couple sharing a kiss. It replaced the artificial “revolutionary passion” prevalent in previous artworks with the primal, genuine affection of highland herdsmen. For the first time, it centered the joys, sorrows and private innate emotions of individual ordinary people, declaring that paintings did not need to carry grand political missions—they could simply portray authentic human beings.

2. Celebrating unvarnished, original life authenticity

The painting does not glorify or idealize Tibetan people, nor does it deliberately construct symbolic Tibetan figures framed as either sacred or suffering. It merely captures the natural, unreserved tenderness and desire of people living on the highland:
The man’s raw, powerful life force and the woman’s shy, pure affection are free from the affectation of urban dwellers. The work restores humanity’s simplest, most equal primal emotions, conveying respect and empathy for ordinary lives and innate human nature.

3. Art historical significance: The Shepherd established a new path for lifelike realism

Chen drew upon the logic of Western rural realist painting pioneered by Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet. Abandoning large-format canvases and grand narratives, he created small, sketch-style oil paintings focused on trivial daily moments of underprivileged ordinary people. This opened an entirely new creative direction for Chinese oil painting: art can take root in mundane everyday life, observing ordinary people through an authentic, restrained and plain perspective. It exerted a profound influence on the subsequent ’85 New Wave Art Movement and the development of contemporary realistic oil painting.