I’m not sure when or how I became interested in art, but when I rediscovered the joy of stamp collecting in my late twenties, I was thrilled to find that painting featured in thousands of stamps. Should I collect paintings on stamps? Or should I collect bird stamps? I chose the latter, but have a special interest in stamps featuring bird paintings. Stamps featuring the paintings of Chinese artists is an interest of mine, for example those of Qi Baishi and Xu Beihong. An early example of a painting by Qi Baishi is the People’s Republic of China 1980 River Kingfisher (sg 2946). It is one of a 16v set of paintings, and is shown on the left.