Fang Zhaoling Explained

Fang Zhaoling
Birth Date:14 January 1914
Birth Place:Wuxi, China
Death Place:Hong Kong
Nationality:Chinese
Education:University of Hong Kong, Oxford University
Field:Painting, Calligraphy

Fang Zhaoling (17 January 1914 – 20 February 2006), also known as Lydia Fong, was a Chinese painter and calligrapher.

Biography

Born to a prominent industrialist and scholarly family in the city of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, Fang Zhaoling was a precocious child with strong interests in Chinese calligraphy.[1] She received classical education at home with tutors and a solid modern education at elite Western-style schools, attaining a sound education in both Chinese and European terms that enabled her to cross cultural boundaries with comparative ease. She was the mother of Hong Kong politician Anson Chan.

Fang lost her father when she was very young. With the support of her mother Fang began studying calligraphy and painting and in her teens, she was sent to the United Kingdom to pursue her studies.[2] In 1937, she enrolled at University of Manchester in Britain to study European history and worked as interpreter and assistant for General Fang Zhenwu (Fang Shuping, 1885–1941), who was then traveling in Europe, North America and elsewhere to raise support for China's fight against Japan.[3] She studied under great artists like Qian Songyan (1899-1985)[4] and Chen Jiucun (1898-1975), Chao Shao-an[5] and Chang Dai-chien and attended both the University of Hong Kong and the University of Oxford.[6]

Fang Zhaoling's experiences of hardship and danger during the 1940s were formative in her views of life and art, as the artist increasingly expressed in the inscriptions on her paintings the urgent desire for peace and prosperity of the world. Following the death of her husband, she took over the family's export-import business to raise her eight children and embarked on her fifty-year career as an artist.[7]

Fang Zhaoling's paintings embody an attempt to locate opportunities for change within the tradition sometimes looking toward the West, but without losing sight of the norms of traditional Chinese ink painting, and paying close attention to brush-and-ink painting techniques. Alluding to both Chinese calligraphy and abstract expressionism, Fang used splashy ink washes alongside gestural brushwork.[8] Fang also added texture to rocky surfaces in her work by scrunching paper into balls and dabbing them in ink, which she used often in her work through the 1980s and beyond.[9] She took part in a considerable number of international exhibitions, and was inspired by her extensive travels in Japan, America, Europe and Asia in the second half of the twentieth century. She returned to China (Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing and Hefei) more frequently in the 1970s.[10]

Fang continued to work throughout her 80s, and in 1996 received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Hong Kong.[11] She held her first solo show at the Fung Ping Shan Library in 1955, University of Hong Kong. The artist later donated a considerable number of her art works to the University of Hong Kong.[12] In 2005, Fang donated 42 of her paintings to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. These are housed alongside a joint piece that she painted with Zhang Daqian.[13]

Personal life

Fang knew Fang Shin-hau (方心誥; 1913 – 1950), the son of well-known anti-Japanese general Fang Zhenwu, when she was studying in the UK and married him in 1938. They had eight children. Fang escaped with her family to Guilin, Tianjin and Shanghai in China due to war and resettled in Hong Kong in 1948. She was widowed in 1950. Her eight children were:

Current exhibitions

Past exhibitions

2018

2017

2016

2014

2013

2012

2008

2006

2005

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1994  

1988

1987

1986  

1985

1984

1983

1982

1981

1978  

1977  

1975    

1974    

1973    

1972  

1971  

1968    

1967  

1962  

1961

1960

1957-8

1956

1955

1953-4

1951

1933

Awards

In 2003, Fang was awarded the Bronze Bauhinia Star for her accomplishments in Chinese ink painting and calligraphy.[15]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Alisan Fine Arts. www.alisan.com.hk. 2019-03-29.
  2. News: Chinese painter Fang Zhaoling dies. 28 August 2010. CBC News. 21 February 2006.
  3. Book: Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen. Painting Her Way: The Ink Art of Fang Zhaoling. Asia Society. 2017. 978-988-12272-9-4. Hong Kong. 19.
  4. Book: Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen. Painting Her Way: The Ink Art of Fang Zhaoling. Asia Society. 2017. 978-988-12272-9-4. Hong Kong. 17.
  5. Book: Hong Kong Artists: The Early Generation. Hong Kong Urban Council. 1978. 9622150071. Hong Kong. 30.
  6. News: Hongkong Artist Feted In America. 18 August 1960. South China Morning Post.
  7. Book: Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen. Painting Her Way: The Ink Art of Fang Zhaoling. Asia Society. 978-988-12272-9-4. Hong Kong. 21.
  8. Book: Clarke . David . Art & Place: Essays on Art From a Hong Kong Perspective . 1996 . Hong Kong University Press . 9622094155.
  9. Web site: Dembina . Andrew . Ink Art of Fang Zhaoling - Prestige Online - Society's Luxury Authority . Prestige Online . 9 March 2020 . 4 October 2017.
  10. Book: Tradition to contemporary: ink painting and artistic development in the 20th-century China. University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong. 2018. 978-988-19025-5-9. Hong Kong.
  11. Web site: Honorary Graduates. The University of Hong Kong. 12 March 2018.
  12. Book: Tradition to contemporary: ink painting and artistic development in 20th-century China. University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong. 2018. 978-988-19025-5-9. Hong Kong.
  13. News: Anson Chan's mother dies aged 92. 21 February 2006. South China Morning Post.
  14. Web site: Exhibitions - Alisan Fine Arts. www.alisan.com.hk. 2019-03-29.
  15. News: Controversy as honours body says no one earned top award. Benitez. Mary Ann. 1 July 2003. South China Morning Post.

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