A series of three large-scale individual exhibitions, starting last August at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, has caused some frustration among the public: Why is the museum showing works by three artists who are not famous, who are hardly even known to us at all?

Two paintings by the late Ho Te-lai, whose works are on exhibit now, were provided by his descendants in Taiwan as part of the "Retrospective on Taiwan's Early Western Artists" held five years ago. However, other information on the painter and his works has been virtually non-existent.

In his long smock and short jacket, Taiwanese artist Liu Chin tang （third from left in the front row） had a naive and romantic idea of his mother country, China. （photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum）

Who is Liu Chin-tang?

As luck would have it, at the end of 1993 the head of a shipping company that has worked with the Museum for many years learned that all Ho Te-lai's works were in the keeping of his nephew, Ho Teng-chin (Togei Fujida). The enthusiastic efforts of this citizen brought Ho Teng-chin and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum into contact, upon which the museum's director, Huang Kuang-nan, personally went to Japan to visit him. He very much wanted to bring these works, contrary to the style of their period, back to Taiwan for the appreciation of Ho's compatriots. "Finding old painters forgotten abroad is like helping people find the spirit of their ancestors. It is extremely exciting." Each time he speaks of the stroke of good fortune that brought the Ho Te-lai paintings, Huang feels vindicated in his work.

The story of how the work of Liu Chin-tang returned home is an even longer one.

Thirteen years ago, China Times reporter Li Mei-ling was still studying art history in National Taiwan University's history department. Reading Fine Art Magazine one day, she happened to see an article by artist Hsieh Li-fa introducing Liu Chin-tang's painting "Abandoned." It was known only that Liu was a Taiwanese who had gone to Japan to study painting during the Japanese occupation. He then went to China, which at the time was splintered into warlord-controlled territories, and changed his name to Wang Yue-chih. Hoping to learn more, Li Mei-ling asked the teachers in the department. To her surprise, none even knew who Liu Chin-tang was. Li explains that this is actually not very odd, considering that at the time Taiwanese history was not on the curriculum, and the history of fine arts had not yet been established. Liu Chin-tang assumed the status of an enigma in her heart.

With the restoration of postal communication between mainland China and Taiwan, Hsieh Li-fa was able to contact Liu Chin-tang's third son Liu Yi in Beijing. Bit by bit, the life of Liu Chin-tang began to emerge from the currents of history.

When Japan invaded northeast China, many common people fled as refugees. A deeply moved Liu Chin-tang painted "Abandoned." The artist Hsieh Li-fa later called this the first painting of resistance to Japan. （photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum） Oil on canvas, 122×52, 1934.

It must be brought back

The year 1995 is an important one for art history in Taiwan. The cession of Taiwan to Japan one hundred years ago resulted in the importation of Western-style oil painting, new sculpting media, and new creative concepts. This marked the start of Western art in Taiwan. And it was around 1895 that Taiwan's first generation of artists to study in Japan--Huang Tu-shui, Chen Cheng-po, and Liu Chin-tang--were born.

On the grand occasion of the centennial celebration of Chen Cheng-po's birthday held in Chiayi, the China Times decided to go to Beijing to search for the forgotten Liu Chin-tang. Arriving in Beijing, Li Mei-ling and painter Chiang Hsun learned that over forty paintings saved by Liu Chin-tang had been donated to the Museum of Chinese Art. Li remembers that it was a very cold day when China Fine Arts Museum personnel took canvas after canvas, all very dark, from the warehouse. Some of the paintings were riddled with moth-holes; others were unwrapped with a shower of paint flakes dropping off the canvas.

As these creations were freed one by one from their repose of nearly sixty years, "It was as if the spectators saw the emotions and experiences of the artist playing tug-of-war with his era." Li Mei-ling's and Chiang Hsun's eyes met in unspoken understanding. "At that moment, we decided we had to carry this matter through to its completion." Walking out of the museum, the two of them were on cloud nine, unable to stammer out anything but "very good, very good, very good." Li Mei-ling describes her feelings at the time: "We felt a sadness in our hearts. How could this person be so unfortunate, an entire life's work of such caliber going completely unknown?"

Finally, with the support of the China Times and local businesses, Liu Chin-tang's mottled paintings were allowed to return home for an exhibition, more than fifty years after Liu's death, and under the condition that the paintings be restored and reframed. It was a homecoming not just for these paintings, but also for the joys and travails of the artists of that era. The paintings filled in another link in Taiwan's art history, a history still being uncovered today.

Who recalls these bygone men?

One afternoon a little more than a year ago, an artist's friend took a book of paintings printed by the artist himself to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and asked, "Koko Takahara? Does anybody know of Koko Takahara?" No one knew. But when he mentioned Takahara's Chinese name Fan Hung-chia, exhibition department researcher Lin Yu-chun thought he remembered having seen the name when researching his master's thesis on the old painters of the Japanese occupation era. Fortunately, Lin acted on his recollection, for otherwise the works of Fan Hung-chia would have remained unseen to this day.

Fan Hung-chia is now 90 years old. He has never maintained close association with the art world, having spent his career at Japanese and Hong Kong commercial enterprises after the war. He never sought profit or fame from his painting, which was purely a means of inner solace. He is unmoved by the enormous sums his paintings would command today. His omission from the history of art is thus not unexpected: There is not so much as a single sentence describing his life or his work.

In the middle of this month, Fan Hung-chia's 90-year retrospective exhibition will be held at the Taipei Fine Art Museum. Supervising the exhibition will be Lin Yu-chun, who has been busy compiling five audiotapes of interviews conducted with the artist in Hong Kong. The tapes constitute the only materials extant on the artist, whose interviews with Lin marked his first reunion with his compatriots.

Separated for more than half a century from his hometown and the world of art, and restricted now in his movements, the old painter asks, "Would it be a disappointment? Would it be a disappointment?"

Fan Hung-chia's paintings have all come home! This old artist, who is meeting the Taiwanese public for the first time, does not paint for fame or profit, but for his own consolation. But the keener noses in the market are already sniffing out his works.

The requisite "more material"

In recent years, both Taiwanese history and art history have gradually established their place in academia. In particular, the study of the older generation of painters of the Japanese occupation has unfolded steadily and accumulated a body of literature. "However, the works of Taiwan's old painters that have been compiled to date are insufficient if we hope to understand the aesthetic of the early period. We need to find more material," states Huang Kuang-nan. The "more material" of which Huang speaks is now to be found in the works of these old painters forgotten overseas.

The old painters who left Taiwan faced different circumstances from those who stayed, circumstances which contributed to different kinds of artwork. In order to better understand these differences, let us go back one hundred years, to the time when Taiwan was ceded to Japan.

One hundred years ago, the defeated Ching Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Intending to make Taiwan into a cultural colony, the Japanese added music and art courses to public school curricula. Thus began Taiwan's contact with oil painting, water color, and sculpture, giving rise to its first generation of Western painters.

As Taiwan's first generation of Western-style artists, these painters faced the pressure of proving, through their own example, to their contemporaries and elders that artistic creation can be a meaningful career, a profession that brings fame and success. This first generation of painters thus shared a common goal: to pass the entrance examinations of Asia's premier school of Western art--Japan's Tokyo Fine Arts College. After studying there, the goal was to enter works in the officially sponsored "Imperial Exhibition" and "Provincial Exhibition." This was the path to fame and fortune in Taiwan's painting circles.

In his interview with Lin Yu-chun, the older painter Fan Hung-chia recalled that after he graduated from the Tainan Normal School, his parents had no objection to his going on to the Tokyo Fine Arts College for advanced study. Fan reminisces, "They just knew that after studying there, I could always be a teacher. So they were very happy--my grandfather, who seldom ventured out of doors, went to the harbor to see me off."

Ho Teng-chin, nephew of Ho Te-lai, donated not only his uncle's paintings but also manuscripts, poems, and photos to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. This is a real harvest for art historians.

A taste of the Imperial Exhibition

In order to enter "official" salon exhibitions such as the Imperial Exhibition and the Taiwan Exhibition, it was inevitable that painters would adopt the styles demanded by custom at the entrance competitions. In his book The Fine Arts Movement of the Japanese Occupation, Hsieh Li-fa discusses how in order to enter a competition, artists first had to take their works to the house of the teacher judging the competition so that he could view them. Sometimes, they even had to take their preliminary sketches to the teacher to be corrected. The salon model grew up in this way.

As for the themes of the paintings, the majority were table still-lifes, landscapes, or female nudes. Paintings tended toward the firm, cautious structure of the Classical school. Human figures had to be seated or standing, with hands folded properly in front. Near the close of the Japanese period, critic Wan Pai-yuan published the following reminder: "Taiwan's artists are more fortunate than others. Fame comes easily to them, and they soon become masters. But on the other hand, this situation also constitutes a latent crisis in the development of the fine arts in Taiwan."

Ho Te-lai's "The Overburdened Earth" is not just a reflection on overpopulation, but also on human ambition. （photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum） Oil on canvas, 145×112, 1950.

Faithful to the times, faithful to himself

Comparing the trends of Western art in Tokyo, Beijing, and Taiwan at the time, we find the institution of the official exhibition salon in Taiwan, with greater uniformity in style prevailing. In Tokyo itself we find, in addition to the official exhibitions, a number of private painting associations and free personal styles that were never brought to Taiwan. Meanwhile, China's painters, living amidst domestic turmoil and foreign invasion, felt the pressure of disappearing traditions. Forced to absorb the creative techniques and methods of the West, China's painters devoted their efforts to the reform of traditional painting, seeking an East-West fusion of technique. The content of their paintings abounded in themes of ethnic consciousness. Western painting thus followed completely different courses of development in China and Taiwan. Taiwan's painters were fortunate not to carry the burden of tradition, yet this fact meant a relative lack of a sense of the times among the first generation of painters, when compared to their contemporaries in literature.

Of the two painters rediscovered in the last year, Liu Chin-tang and Ho Te-lai, Liu was faithful to the times, and Ho was faithful to himself. In China, he joined Hsu Pei-hung, Lin Feng-mian, and the rest of China's artistic reformers in dedicating himself to experimental reforms in art education and creation. Due to political struggle compounded with war in the Northeast, later works, without exception, voice the grievous cries of the Chinese people. Ho Te-lai, born ten years after Liu, resisted the formulaic paintings of the competitions and for the greater part of his life shut himself up in Japan, where he joined the Shinkozo-Sha (the "New Structure Society") school characterized by freedom and unrestricted direction. He remained faithful to his own thoughts, and to his personal creative device of inserting words into his paintings. In both content and form, Ho's and Liu's work differed radically from that of their contemporaries. Unlike Ho and Liu, who lived and died abroad, the remainder of the older generation of painters, such as Liu's contemporary Chen Cheng-po and Ho's contemporaries Yang San-lang, Li Mei-shu, and Li Shih-chiao, all spent their lives in Taiwan.

After the homecoming exhibition of these two artists' works, local art workers expressed their regret that Liu Chin-tang did not live long enough to return to his homeland, and that Ho Te-lai's paintings were not exhibited fifteen years earlier. Who knows the influence this might have had on the creative concepts of the time, or even on the modern art of today?

But sighs and regrets cannot right the vagaries, injustices, and tragedies of history. Just thinking of how these works survived the ravages of war and disaster to reemerge today, we, their heirs, cannot but cherish them profoundly.

The old painters have come home. Having your paintings kept in a museum in your native place is perhaps the best way for artists to "go home.".

Chi Pai-shih's paintings--all sold

In 1937, the 43-year-old Liu Chin-tang was struck down in his prime by a mortal illness, leaving a widow and five children in mainland China. One can only imagine the hardships they suffered during the War of Resistance against Japan and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, especially given Liu's Taiwanese status. Despite Liu Chin-tang's expressed wish that the paintings serve as his children's tuition, his widow Kuo Shu-min endured great privation to hold onto them. "It wasn't that my mother didn't sell our family's paintings. She sold them: Chi Pai-shih's, Hsu Pei-hung's, Chang Ta-chien's paintings were all sold. But she didn't sell a single one of my father's paintings." These are the words of Liu Yi, Liu Chin-tang's third son, who now serves as the assistant director of mainland China's National Calligraphers Association.

The paintings of the childless Ho Te-lai are all in the keeping of his nephew, Ho Teng-chin. Ho Te-lai likened his nephew to a pillar of his life, a relationship resembling that between Van Gogh and his brother Theo.

After Ho Te-lai's death, Ho Teng-chin set aside a special room in Tokyo, where every meter of space is immensely expensive, to store his uncle's works.

Although not a connoisseur of art himself, Ho Teng-chin knows that his uncle loved his paintings like sons, never having sold a single one of them. On one occasion, a collector happened to take a great liking to a small painting Ho Te-lai had made of a toad in his back yard. The collector was willing to pay ¥800,000 for the piece, and after pleading with Ho for several days, persuaded him to sell it. But the next morning, Ho promptly phoned the collector to tell him he was unable to sell, because the toad had come to him in a dream that night, sobbing, "Why are you going to to sell me?" This story gives some indication of the this artist's devotion to his paintings.

Truly coming home

Ho Teng-chin,who is nearly seventy years old, has often been plagued by a concern since his uncle's passing. For although many Japanese museums are interested in purchasing Ho Te-lai's paintings, this would mean dispersing the collection. Pass them on to his descendants? Who knows whether they will continue to treasure them so. It was in the midst of this indecision that the Taipei Fine Art Museum contacted him and began talking enthusiastically about an exhibition or possible donation. During this time, Ho made a trip himself to the museum's storage facility to look it over. Finally, at the end of last year, he donated 110 of Ho Te-lai's canvases to the museum, including calligraphy, manuscripts, and poems as well as paintings. The only art he kept in Tokyo was the painting of the toad, along with a few self-portraits, hoping that his uncle, buried in Tokyo, would have this small painting as company if his spirit should return some night.

For artists who have already been studied extensively, spreading their works among many museums affords more people the chance to enjoy the originals themselves. But Ho Te-lai's work, recently unearthed and still virtually unstudied, is best collected in one location to facilitate research.

Fan Hung-chia will be coming to Taiwan soon to preside over the opening ceremony of his exhibition. With most of his contemporaries in the art world long deceased, he is a living dictionary of art history. He is able to fill in the gaps in history of art, not just through his works, but by recounting his life in those days as well as the examination procedures and topics at the Tokyo Fine Arts College.

One cannot go so far as to say that the history of Taiwanese art would be fractured without the stories of these old painters, whose lives and activities were not centered around Taiwan. Yet if they were not known to the public, it would be a loss nonetheless.

The live and works of Liu Chin-tang and Ho Te-lai are discussed below. As for Fan Hung-chia, his upcoming exhibition represents the first time his works have seen the light of day. Their style and significance thus still await the discussion and appraisal of the art world. Not even a rudimentary introduction is possible; we leave his work to everyone to appreciate for themselves.

[Picture Caption]

p.97

A group of middle school students are taken by their teacher to view HoTe-lai's paintings. The old painter, who had countless students in Japan, finally stands before the young scholars of Taiwan.

p.98

In his long smock and short jacket, Taiwanese artist Liu Chin tang (third from left in the front row) had a naive and romantic idea of his mother country, China. (photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

p.98

When Japan invaded northeast China, many common people fled as refugees. A deeply moved Liu Chin-tang painted "Abandoned." The artist Hsieh Li-fa later called this the first painting of resistance to Japan. (photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum) Oil on canvas, 122×52, 1934

p.99

Fan Hung-chia's paintings have all come home! This old artist, who is meeting the Taiwanese public for the first time, does not paint for fame or profit, but for his own consolation. But the keener noses in the market are already sniffing out his works.

p.100

Ho Teng-chin, nephew of Ho Te-lai, donated not only his uncle's paintings but also manuscripts, poems, and photos to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. This is a real harvest for art historians.

p.100

Ho Te-lai's "The Overburdened Earth" is not just a reflection on overpopulation, but also on human ambition. (photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum) Oil on canvas, 145×112, 1950

p.102

The old painters have come home. Having your paintings kept in a museum in your native place is perhaps the best way for artists to "go home."