ILLUSTRATED:

Lin Fengmian, Shanghai Fine Arts Publishing House, Shanghai, May 1997, color illustrated,
p. 23, (titled "Lady")

EXHIBITED:

Exhibition for Celebration of the Reunification of Hong Kong with China, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 1997

"Oriental Beauty with Fan" is a 1950s belle painting by Lin Fengmian. Utilizing symmetrical composition, a court lady with a topknot sits in the center of the picture. Painted in rich and harmonious colors, the background is decorated with flowers and floral patterns. Lin Fengmian's paintings combine Chinese and Western styles. Impressionist colors and lighting, Modigliani's figures, and Matisse's fauvist decorative style all influenced his figure paintings to some extent, while Han dynasty tombstone carvings, porcelains, lacquerware, murals, shadow puppetry and other folk arts of ancient China silently nourished him. It is truly a rare achievement that Lin's early belle paintings closely followed the traditional, yet remain distinct from the works of other Chinese or Western painters while retaining his own unique aesthetic style.

The sketching and coloring of "Oriental Beauty with Fan" emphasizes a strict symmetry. The court lady looks dignified and demure; the way she lowers her head and holds the fan reminds us of the elegance of Guan Yin. The dark coloring of the figure appears to have been influenced by the Dunhuang murals. His use of layered colors and meticulous application together create the splendid texture of an ancient mural. Art critic Lang Shaojun believes that Lin may have seen Chang Dai-chien's copies of the Dunhuang murals when he took refuge in Chongqing in the 1940s. During the 1940s and 1950s, Lin did several figure paintings relating to Dunhuang and gradually developed the classic form featured in his later belle paintings.

Lin Fengmian once wrote in a letter to his student, "If you have the chance to view the murals in the Dunhuang Grottoes, you will witness the greatest artworks of the East. They are an ideal that many European masters, like Gaugin, pursued but failed to attain. I have been pursuing this ideal for so long, one that seems very easy but is actually difficult to attain. The flat color application between two lines and the gradation of mid-tone colors are a feat almost unachievable by human hands. I dream of achieving this when I paint the human form." Lin's romanticism and ideals are expressed in his belle paintings, and the "Oriental Beauty with Fan" represents Lin's pursuit of classic beauty and eternal art.