This contribution introduces and translates into English two lectures by Gao Qifeng (1889–1933), co-founder of the Lingnan school of painting. Giacomo Bruni first outlines the historical background: the decline of the Qing court, Sun Yat-sen’s nationalist movement, and the study of the Gao brothers and Chen Shuren in Meiji Japan, where they encountered Western realism and Nihonga. From this experience the Lingnan school pursued a “New National Painting” that would “reconcile Chinese and Western, and blend ancient and modern”, breaking with the formalism of late Qing copying. Gao Qifeng’s career is divided into an early period of Japanese influence, revolutionary activity and publishing in Shanghai, and a later period in Guangzhou devoted to teaching and to a renewed bird-and-flower painting. The two lectures, delivered at Lingnan University in 1925, are presented in Chinese and English. “Aesthetic Feeling and Cultural Education” argues that painting revives innate aesthetic and moral sensibility and serves Confucian moral education. “The Art of Painting Is Not Lifeless” calls on painters to study science and society and to combine the best of Chinese and Western art to express the spirit of their age.