About the Author:Wu Yongqing was the former Consul General of the Consulate in Douala.
Young Pan Yuliang
In the modern Chinese painting world, Pan Yuliang is a legendary female painter. A graduate of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, she has traveled to Chongyang twice, engaged in painting and sculpture art activities in Paris, France for more than 50 spring and autumn. She is a master of painting, leaving behind more than 2,000 works of art and many legends in her lifetime. In the 1970s, I worked at the Chinese Embassy in France, and I had the opportunity to know Pan Yuliang and know many things about her that are lesser known.
I arrived in Paris on 28 September 1971 and attended a reception at the Embassy the next day to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. At the reception, an elderly female overseas Chinese with a darker face, a wrinkled face, and an unassuming appearance caught my attention. She has short hair, likes to drink, speaks loudly, and has a manly demeanor. Colleagues at the embassy told me that her name was Pan Yuliang, a famous female painter in France, and a distinguished guest of Ambassador Huang Zhen. Then I learned of her legendary origins.
In 1928, Pan Yuliang introduced it in the Shanghai Pictorial
Pan Yuliang, formerly known as Yang Xiuqing, also known as Zhang Yuliang, was born in 1895 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. Her father died of illness when she was born, her mother died when she was 8 years old, and at the age of 13 she was tricked by her uncle who gambled on sticks into going to Wuhu, Anhui Province, and sold them to a brothel as a fire burner. During her four years in the brothel, she refused to pick up customers and fled 10 times, disfigured and hanged several times, and was tortured and tortured. Pan Zanhua, who was then the customs supervisor of Wuhu, was a member of the League, and graduated from Waseda University in Japan at an early age, and was an upright and compassionate person. In 1913, he rescued Yuliang from the fire pit and married him, with Chen Duxiu as the witness. Zhang Yuliang expressed his gratitude and changed his name to Pan Yuliang.
In the first half of 1973, I ended my study at the embassy and entered the consular department as a full librarian of the embassy, so I began to have more than 5 years of interaction with Pan Yuliang for work reasons, and further deepened my understanding of her. The ones that impressed me the most were the following:
★ ★ Patriotism
Pan Yuliang has lived in France for more than 50 years and has always loved the motherland. In 1921, she went to France to study painting and sculpture, and in 1928 she returned to China to serve, successively teaching at the Shanghai Art College and the Fine Arts Department of Central University.
Pan Yuliang's painting "My Family"
In 1937, Pan Yuliang went to France again to participate in the "Universal Exposition" held in Paris and held her own painting exhibition, and since then she has lived in France for more than 40 years, never returning to her beloved motherland. She told me that the French government had repeatedly asked her to become a French citizen because of her outstanding artistic achievements, but she refused, and she always held a Chinese passport throughout her life. According to common sense, for an ordinary foreigner in France, it is a dream to become a French citizen, but she is such a person who is different from ordinary people, which shows her patriotic heart.
In 1964, China and France established diplomatic relations, and the first ambassadors to France, Huang Zhen and Pan Yuliang, were classmates of the Shanghai Art College. Ambassador Huang visited her several times to brief her on the development of the motherland. After leaving the motherland for nearly 20 years, she suddenly returned to China to visit her relatives and engage in creative thoughts. When the procedures for returning to China were almost completed, the Cultural Revolution broke out, suspending her return to China. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, she was sick and doctors had not allowed her to travel long distances. She was one of the first guests to attend the National Day Overseas Chinese Reception held by the Embassy every year until she was too ill to attend.
In 1977, Pan Yuliang became seriously ill, and my colleagues from the consular department of the embassy and I made a special trip to her home to offer condolences. She told us that her wish to return to China was something she hated for the rest of her life, and hoped that in a hundred years, the embassy would assist in transporting her works back to her motherland.
★ Virtue and art double chime ★
Self-portrait
Street
Vase with fruit box
Courtyard party
Cats with tulips
Yo yo deer singing
Four beautiful postures after the bath
Pan Yuliang's paintings (image from the Internet)
Pan Yuliang's works in his lifetime were fruitful and diverse. She has created a large number of oil paintings, participated in the 51st, 55th and 56th "French Independent Salon Exhibition" in France, and the oil painting "Nude Woman" participated in the "Modern International Art Exhibition" organized by the United Nations. She has also held many traveling exhibitions in the United States, Britain, Italy, Greece and other countries, and has won the "French National Gold Medal", "French Artists Association Encouragement Award", "University of Paris Doreriet Award", "Belgium Brussels Silver Medal" and so on. She is also highly accomplished in sculpture, and her sculptures Grussell Head and Mondesoroux are in the collection of the Musée Deux-Channes in Paris and the French National Institute of Education. She is also good at painting watercolors, Chinese paintings, prints, and drawings. Pan Yuliang's biography has been included in the Dictionary of World Painters, Sculptors, Sketchers and Printmakers published in France.
In 1975, Pan Yuliang held a solo exhibition in a gallery in the Monceau Park in the eighth arrondissement of Paris, France, which was visited by officials of the French Ministry of Culture, foreign diplomats in France, and people from various french circles. A large number of paintings and sculptures by Pan Yuliang were exhibited this time, which was well received by the guests. I was invited to visit as a member of the Consular Department of the Embassy. She told me that many of her works were registered with the French Ministry of Culture and that if they were to be shipped abroad for exhibition, they had to be approved by the French Ministry of Culture.
Pan Yuliang
Pan Yuliang is a proud person, although her life is not rich, but she is helpful, and she has a lot of support for the younger generation who studied painting in France, not only to guide her artistically, but also to help in life. She was a very peculiar person, although her paintings were numerous and popular with buyers, but she only worked hard and rarely sold them. She told me that every painting was her child and that she was reluctant to sell it. This is still the case even in her later years, even if she is poor and sick. In her later years, she lived in a small street near Montparnasse, Paris, with rooms on the top floor, one bedroom and one living room, and a bedroom and studio. Her life is very hard, but she paints at home all day, and she is almost unable to build a house.
When we visited her in 1977, she was so excited that she showed us around her studio. Her room was small, simply furnished, and full of paintings. "My paintings are not for sale, but I can give them to friends," she says. You are my distinguished friends, and I can take my paintings as long as you like. At that time, we did not take it, first, the embassy had strict foreign affairs discipline, and did not allow the librarians to accept gifts from overseas Chinese at will; second, most of her paintings were nude paintings, and in 1977, when the "Cultural Revolution" just ended, the ultra-"left" ideology still bound our thinking, and who dared to ask for her nude paintings!
Pan Yuliang with friends in his apartment
On July 22, 1977, Pan Yuliang passed away with infinite regrets in the midst of poverty and illness. Her close friend Wang Shouyi spent a fortune on a 100-year cemetery at the Montparnasse Cemetery. The marble tombstone in front of the tomb is engraved with Chinese and French characters "The Tomb of The Artist Pan Yuliang" and a statue she made for herself during her lifetime. After Pan was buried, on behalf of the Chinese Embassy in France, I and another comrade from the Consular Department laid a wreath at Mr. Pan's tomb to mourn this patriotic old overseas Chinese.
Due to the complexity and cumbersome procedures for french heritage, when I left France in 1978 and returned to China, Pan Yuliang's inheritance was not yet a clue. Twenty years later, when I returned to France to work in the consular department of the embassy in 1998, I learned that with the efforts of some Chinese painters in France and our embassy in France, more than 2,000 of Pan Yuliang's posthumous works had been transported back to Pan Yuliang's husband's hometown of Anhui in 1985, and the Anhui Provincial Museum was responsible for receiving them.
(Compassion and Joy House)
On June 23, 2012, retired me made a special trip to Hefei, Anhui Province, to visit the "Pan Yuliang Memorial Hall" of the Provincial Museum. When I stood in front of Pan Yuliang's posthumous works and saw many familiar paintings, I thought silently in my heart: Pan Yuliang's lifelong wish has finally come, and her artistic brainchild has finally returned to the motherland to meet her beloved people. If Mr. Pan Yuliang has knowledge underground, this should be the best memorial and comfort for this legendary figure.
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Author | Wu Yongqing Photo | Internet
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