Pu Hsin-yu(1896-1963)

 ( Original: Color and Ink on Silk; size: 61cmx33cm , Wallscroll )

P'u ju was born on 25 July 1896, sixteen years before the establishment of the Republic and was the great-grandson of Emperor Hsuan-tsung. His name in Manchurian was Ai-hsm chudeh-lo p'u-ju, and he later Used the character P'u, given to family members of his generation, as his surname. His style name was Hsin-yu and he also liked to impress the seal "ch'iu-wang-ssun"(grandson of a past king) on paintings and calligraphic works as a self-reference.

When P'u was 14, his father, Tal-ying passed away, and P'u was reared by his mother. He graduated from Fa-cheng College in 1913, and in May of1917 he married Ms: Lo Ch'ing-yuan, the daughter of Shen Chung, the Governer General of Shensi and Kansu provinces during the former Ch'ing dynasty, at the behest of his' mother. After he married, P'u lived in seclusion at the Chieh-t'ai Temple on Mt Ma-an in Peking, refusing contact with friends and devoting himself to reading, painting and writing calligraphy. He called himself "Hsi-shan yi-shih" (Recluse of the Western Mountain) In 1934, P'u accepted a teaching post at the Peking Arts School and. in 1937, his mother passed away. Mourning his mother, P'u compiled a book. entitled, Tzu-hsun-tsuan-cheng and wrote that one must strive "to leave worthy writings to posterity, be of moral character, and to perfect one's principles" and "[look] indifferently upon wealth, position and glory. ' These concepts were' the product of his mother's upbringing and educating.

In 1946, P'u held a joint exhibition in Nanking with Ch'i Pai-shih. Also in this year P'u organized a Manchu Association, and the government called for the opening of the First National .Assembly. P'u was selected as are a representative. After participating in the Assembly in the south, he used the opportunity to travel to famous sites in the Chiang-nan region. At this time, however, the Communists bad already caused complete political upheaval so that in 1949, P'u was forced to live temporarily in Hangchow and also pass through the city of Ting-hali. In October of 1949, he reached the Chou-shan islands and then came to Taiwan. After he reached Taiwan, he lived on Lin-yi Street in Taipei. In 1959, P'u held a painting exhibition in Taipei and heal so taught in the art department at Taiwan Provincial Teachers' College. In 1954, he was presented with the first arts-award conferred by the Ministry of Education for his book, Han-yii-t'ang liin-hua. (Han-yu Studio Theories on Painting). In 1955, he traveled to Korea to lecture and was awarded an honorary doctorate at Seoul University. After traveling leisurely through Korea, he went to Japan and it was already 1956 when he started back to Taipei. In 1957 he was a lecturer in the Chinese Department at Tung-hai University, and in 1958 he traveled-to Thailand and held an exhibition in Bangkok and thereafter traveled to Hong Kong and lectured at the Hong Kong Hsin-ya Academy on Chinese literature, calligraphy and painting. In the same year, his manuscript, Han-yn-t'ang lun-shu-hua (Han-yu Studio Theories on Calligraphy and Painting) was published in facsimile by the World Press. In 1959,the manuscript for P'u'S Ssu-sim ching-yi chi-cheng (Explanation of the Four Books' Through the Understanding o] the classics) was purchased by the Central Library.

P'u was generally a healthy man, at over sixty his vision had still not begun to weaken. His kung-pi or meticulously detailed paintings and his "fly-head" small-sized standard script calligraphy could still similarly be executed to his desire. In 1962, P'u again traveled to Hong Kong to lecture at the Hsin-ya Academy. During this trip he occasionally felt congested, but did not pay much attention to it. Not long after he returned to Taiwan, P'u discovered that a growth had developed behind his right ear. After he was examined, his doctor diagnosed that the growth was cancerous. All medicine administered proved to be ineffective. He passed away on 18 November 1963 in Taipei.

Chinese of the cultured world have praised P'u Hsin-yU for his unsurpassed poetry, calligraphy and painting, but P'u never considered himself a painter or calligrapher. He felt that the emotion and vigor he devoted to composing poetry and prose was never secondary to what he exerted to painting. and writing calligraphy. The most important aspect of P'u's remarkable life was his attitude on being a respectable and ethical individual. When the Japanese armies invaded China, they established a quisling government in Manchuria. Because of his family lineage, P'u composed-a work entitled, Chien Pien, to illustrate his convictions. When the mainland was occupied by the Communists, P'u did not adhere to the demands of the enemy. And when P'u traveled to Japan, he insistently refused their protection. P'u wrote of himself that he began to study the seal, clerical and standard scripts when he reached boyhood. His calligraphic style is characterized by a. clean and orderly manner which appears calm and thoughtful and is imbued with deep strength. As a young boy, he understood complexities of brrsh  techniques and was already capable of utilizing these techniques at his will. His painting was self-taught through frequent copying and probably began during the period in which he lived in seclusion on Mt. Ma-an. P'u once said, "I have never studied painting with any teachers. As long as one writes characters well and composes poems well, then painting should not be difficult" Because his family collected old paintings, P'u certainly did not lack any good models to copy. The painting from which P'u learned the most was an anonymous landscape hand-scroll from the Sung dynasty. P'u incorporated into his style elements of the masters Ma Yuan and Hsia Kuei of the Southern Sung period; Wang Meng of the Yuan dynasty; and Wu Wei, Wang O, Wen Cheng-ming and T'ang Yin from the Che School of the Ming dynasty, and he also observed changes in the color, light and shade of mountains and rivers and depicted them using similar methods of painting and calligraphy. He further added his own antiquated, light, clean and crisp features, surpassing the ordinary as soon as he put brush to paper. With such capabilities, P'u developed into a master among his contemporaries.