Pan Yuliang Nude with Tulips, 1966

Nude with Tulips is an ink and pigment painting on paper.

At the center of the work sits a naked woman with her legs defiantly straddled, bearing her back and buttocks and yet concealing her identity. In the background tulips rise from a duo-tone copper vase. Some of the flowers remain demurely closed, while others are in full bloom.

Nude with Tulips combines two of Pan’s most iconic series: female nudes and floral still lifes. It is particularly interesting that the artist chose to depict tulips, which were not widespread in China at the time and which thus further represent the influence of her time in Europe on her painting. Throughout her life, Pan Yuliang returned to the theme of the female nude, rendering women’s bodies with great care and attention, while also challenging the conventional male gaze predominant in the works of many of her contemporaries. Although much lauded in Paris, her nude portraits were criticized at the time in China. Today Pan Yuliang is rightfully considered a national treasure and her works are included in many Chinese public and private collections as well as in her second home, France.

Pan Yuliang was born in 1895 in Yangzhou and passed away in 1977 in Paris. She has been hailed as one of the most influential artists and modern art educators of 20th century China. In 1920, Pan was accepted to the Western Art Department at the Shanghai Art Academy and became a member of the first co-educational class there. Having gained acceptance to the Sino-Franco College in Lyon which held its first recruitment in China in 1921, she quit the Shanghai Art Academy to travel to France.

During her years abroad, she also attended the Ecole des beaux-arts in Lyon, the Ecole des beaux-arts in Paris, the Accademia del Belle Arti di Roma where she studied drawing and sculpting. Due to her outstanding achievements, Pan received a scholarship from the Italian Ministry of Education as well as having her works selected for exhibitions in Italy, making her the first Chinese artist to receive such honors.

At the beginning of 1928, Pan Yuliang returned to China and was appointed Dean of Western Art at the Shanghai Art Academy. Over the next decade, Pan held numerous exhibitions in China and Japan and served as lecturer at the Art Department of the Education Academy of Central University. Pan Yuliang returned to France in 1937, never to return to China again. During her 40 years abroad, her works were frequently exhibited in France, as well as in America, England and other countries and she received many awards. When she passed away in 1977, she insisted to be buried wearing a qipao and to have all her works shipped back to her home province, Anhui.

Much of her work is now housed in the Anhui Museum in Hefei, with major works also held in the National Museum of History, Taipei; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; Cina Art Museum, Shanghai; Musee Cernuschi, Paris; Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Musée National d’art Moderne, France.

Provenance

Brenda Wang, Jia Art Gallery, Taipei. Acquired 1996, Sotheby's