Xu Beihong was born in Yixing, Jiangsu Province of China on July 19, 1895.Xu began studying classic Chinese works and calligraphy with his father Xu Dazhang when he was six, and Chinese painting when he was nine.
Beginning in 1919, Xu studied overseas in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he studied oil painting and drawing. He came back to China in 1927 and, from 1927 to 1929, gained a number of posts at institutions in China, including teaching at National Central University in the former capital city Nanjing.
He was primarily known for his shuimohua (Chinese ink paintings) of horses and birds and one of the first Chinese artists to articulate the need for artistic expressions that reflected a new modern China at the beginning of the 20th century. He was also regarded as one of the first to create monumental oil paintings with epic Chinese themes - a show of his high proficiency in an essential Western art technique.