Back in 1980, when he was still a student at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Luo Zhongli emerge in the art scene at the "Second National Youth Arts Exhibition," where his epic piece "Father" won a major prize and turned a new page in the history of Chinese realism painting. Not only would this work influence a whole generation, its phenomenal success also allowed Luo to go abroad and further hone his skills in Europe. After his return to China, he focused on teaching and on a series of countryside-themed paintings. In this way, he spurred the development of local painting and continued to expand his creative range. Today, as the Dean of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, he continues to reinvent his artistic language and explore new forms of expression, while his paintings have found their way into the collections of many distinguished museums and galleries, including the National Art Museum of China, the Shanghai Art Museum, Taiwan's ShanArt Gallery, the Harvard University Art Museums, the Oklahoma State Art Museum, and the Belgium National Museum of History.

This lot, "Autumn: Girl Holding a Cat," one of Luo's early works, captures a scene that is at first glance infused with a pure sense of serenity and gentleness: a harvest scene with a stack of wheat straw, and a girl with a white cat—together they conjure up the absorbingly enchanting atmosphere of a rural idyll. However, the girl's eyes, which seem to communicate a slight feeling of apprehension, and the expression of curiosity gleaming from the white cat's eyes, both draw the observer's attention into the far distance, and these elements of visual movement and subliminal disquiet generate a more tense and mysterious mood, leaving the viewer with countless associations and possibilities to ponder. Yet the painting bears all the characters of Luo's early works of rural realism: terse, solid shapes, delicate, well-structured composition, and soft, well-matched colors, all serving to portray the ordinary lives of peasants in his native Sichuan, and bring out the lyricism of everyday life.