“If one were to choose a painter from past and present who could really pictorialize thoughts, it would have to be Ren Bonian,” said the Chinese painter Xu Beihong. Bonian lived from 1840 to 1896 and was a member of the Shanghai School, which brought popular influences into formal traditions of painting. This major exhibition of Ren Bonian’s work, a first in Hong Kong, features paintings singular for their use of color as well as their evocation of a subject’s spirit. —J.V.