Herding

This painting is dedicated to Lei Shi Duo, which refers to Monsieur Henri Lestoquay, a secretary to the French Ambassador in China during the mid 1940s. He joined French Ambassador General Pechkoff and Monsieur Jacques Mercier. Later, through a co-worker Mr. Liu, Fu Baoshi and other painters were introduced to members of the embassy. It's likely through his introduction that Lestoquay and Fu formed their friendship in arts.
Lestoquay described Fu as 'one of the most important contemporary Chinese artists' in one of his letters. He admired and had a great affection for Fu's paintings. There was a long discussion when Fu dedicated his work to Lestoquay in Chinese characters. The phonetic for "les" does not exist in Chinese, thus Lestoquay's Chinese surname was deemed Lei. His first name was change to Shi, meaning scholarly dignified man and Duo symbolizing the ancient bell used by the emperor of China to proclaim his orders.