A Lifetime Devoted to the Brush
Theresa Wang / photos Vincent Chang / tr. by Peter Eberly
November 1986
For the elderly painter Chen Chin, the recent exhibit of her works held by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, called "A Retrospective at Eighty," was quite unexpected.
A noted artist at age 19, Chen Chin has held just one other individual exhibit, when she was 52. Now here she was again, three decades later, her hair fine and silverly but her eyes bright and sparkling and her voice clear as a bell, making her way among the crowd to greet old friends from the Taiwan art world, young admirers seeking advice, and even some old acquaintances who had flown in from Japan--almost as if she were back in the golden years of her heyday....
Half a century ago, when she was just 27, Chen Chin made newspaper headlines around Japan: a painting of hers had been selected for entry in the Japanese Ministry of Culture's Imperial Art Exhibition, one of the highest honors for a painter of the time. "For a Taiwanese to be chosen to exhibit there was simply extraordinary in the eyes of the Japanese," the elderly artist Li Shih-ch'iao has explained.
The Taiwan Art Exhibition was another summit on the road to artistic success. The painter Kuo Hsueh-hu has described the feeling of being chosen to exhibit there as "like ascending into Heaven." And Chen Chin, even though the exhibition was considered unfair at first toward native Taiwanese, had her paintings selected year after year, beginning when she was a 20-year-old student, while at 27 she was even chosen to serve as a judge.
The 80-year-old Chen Chin of today muses that under the social conditions of the time, being "Taiwan's first female overseas student," "Taiwan's first woman painter," and "an unmarried woman of 40" were enough by themselves to make a name for oneself.
However considered, her life has not been an ordinary one.
Most of Taiwan's early generation of artists entered their careers along a common path: born to well-to-do families, they broke with their parents before going to Japan to study.
Chen Chin was luckier. After graduating from high school with honors, she went off to Japan to study painting with the full support of her father and to a warm send off by her teachers and fellow students. But compared with her schoolgirl classmates, who were soon to marry and settle down to comfortable lives as housewives, she paid a price for her choice, and more than just that of forgoing marriage.
She had chosen a road that at the time could be called nearly unprecedented.
Recalling her years of artistic struggle in Japan, Chen Chin maintains even today that success in such a competitive environment could be achieved only by complete devotion to one's work. She describes what it felt like facing the judges' scrutiny: "A work you've spent your lifeblood on is set before a row of some of the biggest-name painters of the time. If they raise their hands, your painting's passed. If they just sit there silently, you're out." Patting her chest, she seems agitated at the recollection still.
After graduating from the Tokyo Women's School of Art, Chen Chin studied under several renowned Japanese painters. Finally, nine years after her arrival in Japan, she became Taiwan's first woman artist to have a work accepted by the Imperial Art Exhibition: her 6'5" × 7' painting "Ensemble."
The reporters came in droves. "The vestibule was so full of shoes," she recalls, "I was afraid they'd put on the wrong ones on their way out."
Her paintings continued to be selected year after year, but she never felt relaxed about it. A sister of hers who had come to Japan to study medicine had it easier, she thought: "You go all out to become a doctor and that's that. But with painting, you can never quit."
To devote herself fully to her painting, she restricted her social life to a minimum. Gentleman callers asking for "Chen San" all got the same reply from her landlord: "Not at home."
Following Retrocession in 1945, after spending more than two decades in Japan, Chen Chin returned to Taiwan. She was a noted painter, but still single at age 40, and her mother was anxious that she find a mate. Compliantly, she married Hsiao Chen-ch'iung, two years her junior, to whom she was introduced by a family friend. And at age 44, she gave birth to a son--by Caesarean section, which she believes was the first time the operation was performed on Taiwan.
To the demands of her art Chen Chin had forfeited her youth and the affluent life of her sisters and classmates. But the image of that life, the fashionable young society lady of 1930s Taiwan, is bodied forth on her canvases.
Her subjects are beautiful women stylishly dressed, sitting at leisure, appreciating flowers or playing music--the height of refinement and poise.
She also paints flowers: orchids, gardenias, magnolias, all bursting in blossom. And her muted tones and exquisite, Japanese-style brushwork add to her subjects a cool and distant tranquility.
Compared with Western-style oils, the lines and colors of Japanese painting like hers, she feels, "better suit a woman's personality--or mine, at any rate." And asked why she paints so many beautiful women, her answer is straightforward and clear: "They're pretty! They're nice to look at!"
After marriage she continued to paint and enter art exhibitions, adding family life and outdoor scenes to her subjects. But shortly after her first individual exhibition, her health declined and her output lessened, although she has done some paintings for Taipei's Fakuang Temple and continues to paint when traveling with her husband. Recently she has spent most her time with her son in Texas, where she and her work have appeared on a local television station.
Even at age 80 what makes her happiest is still "painting a good picture." And asked what her saddest recollection is, this portraitist of perfect beauty opens her eyes wide: "Sad things? Why think about those?"
Her ardent commitment to painting in her youth, her rational choice of marriage in middle age, her supportive father and husband, her good fortune in having had a father for 60 years and a mother for 75--how could her paintings be touched with sadness when she has had blessings and gifts like these?
Besides her painting, Chen Chin is proudest of her son. What's more, her daughter-in-law has had a grandson! When asked why lovely women are the darlings of her art, yet a son the treasure of her life, she replies, "When a daughter gets married, you have to cry, you know. But you don't for a son--and he can give you a pretty daughter-in-law!"
[Picture Caption]
Leisure, 1935. Elegant, leisurely women of the 193Os are Chen Chin's major theme.
Duet, 1934. It was this painting that made Chen Chin Taiwan's first woman painter to have a work selected for the Imperial Exhibition.
Even at 80, Chen Chin continues to paint as assiduously as ever. (photo by Li Ming-sheng)
Wedding Bridal Chamber, 1955. This painting, done after Chen Chin had married, was selected for entry in another Japanese exhibition.
Kuanyin, 1966. Since her illness, Chen Chin has painted many Buddhist pictures, which she says soothe her spirits.
Lungshan Temple, 1986. This is one of Chen Chin's most recent works.
Orchids, 1979. Flowers are another of Chen Chin's specialties.
The elderly Chen Chin, with the support of her husband, Hsiao Chen-ch'iung, is blessed with success in her marriage as well as her art. (photo by Vincent Chang)
Even at 80, Chen Chin continues to paint as assiduously as ever. （photo by Li Ming-sheng）
Duet, 1934. It was this painting that made Chen Chin Taiwan's first woman painter to have a work selected for the Imperial Exhibition.
Wedding Bridal Chamber, 1955. This painting, done after Chen Chin had married, was selected for entry in another Japanese exhibition.
Kuanyin, 1966. Since her illness, Chen Chin has painted many Buddhist pictures, which she says soothe her spirits.
Lungshan Temple, 1986. This is one of Chen Chin's most recent works.
Orchids, 1979. Flowers are another of Chen Chin's specialties.
The elderly Chen Chin, with the support of her husband, Hsiao Chen-ch'iung, is blessed with success in her marriage as well as her art. （photo by Vincent Chang）
