Fu Baoshi used to say that the luckiest thing ever to happen to him was when his father opened his own fan repair shop. Fu said his life-long interest in art was sparked by the sign-painting shops on the same street as that shop.

From August 11th, an exhibition is being held in memory of the centenary of Fu Baoshi’s birth. Over a hundred pieces of the artist’s works are being displayed, including paintings collected by Nanjing Museum, Jiangsu Traditional Chinese Painting Museum and the Imperial Palace Museum. In addition, many rare works from private collections are also going on show to the public for the first time.

In his early years, Fu Baoshi was absorbed in painting, calligraphy and seal cutting.  In 1933, thanks to the recommendation and financial support of Xu Beihong, a renowned Chinese modern artist, he went to Japan to study the history of oriental art.  After returning to China, he taught at the National Central University, then based in Nanjing. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he was appointed vice president of the Chinese Artists Association.

Most of Fu Baoshi’s paintings are based on Tang Dynasty poetry. These poems remain popular today, and the book ‘Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty’ is still one of the most popular and widely-read anthology of Chinese poems. Fu Baoshi had a special gift for grasping the inner meaning of these poems, and using the inspiration for his own work. The soul of the poem was always fully revealed on paper.

‘A Song of Fair Women’ was one of the ‘Poet Sage’ Du Fu’s most famous poems. One of Fu Baoshi’s masterpieces based on the poem took 37 characters from the poem, and organized them into five groups separated by different kinds of trees. The ingenuity of the artist is inspiring, and the careful selection of colours reminds the viewer of the receptive, aloof, sweet-mannered, sincere women with soft fine skin and well-balanced features. It seems that we can even see their embroidered silk robes gleaming in the spring sunshine.