Shiy De-jinn once said: “I never draw in an enclosed space. What I paint must be the landscape in front of me.” He insisted that only in being close to nature can one capture the ever changing landscape. With deep emotion, one may finally create a piece of work that truly moves its viewers. He preferred painting at dawn or dusk since, at these moments, mountains display their most beautiful layers and the clouds and fog flow in the most elegant way. He transformed Taiwan’s scenery into pieces of landscape paintings, showing a sense of ease and tranquility. He preserves the forms of sketching while maintaining the charm of Eastern ink wash.
In his later years, Shiy paid tribute to his teacher, Lin Fengmian, and an elder artist, Li Ke-ran, through his ink wash paintings. However, Shiy also explored his own style in create his aesthetic landscape paintings: “Through the watercolor from the West, my landscapes convey the deep values of the East, and nature is thus endowed with a whole new interpretation. My colors also hold a particular charm in Chinese ink painting, giving this classic painting style with a fresh and energetic vitality. I have devoted myself to explore the mutual influence and a path of communication between Eastern and Western paintings. Now, I have finally found my way!”
It was one o’clock in the afternoon of Sundy, August 2, 1981, when Mr. L boarded a train in Taichung, going up north to visit his old friend Shiy De-jinn at Taiwan University Hospital. Shiy was suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer, and L had lost track of how often he had gone to Taipei to see him since his diagnosis, but it must have been almost every other week. This time on the train, however, he felt an unprecedented sense of anxiety and foreboding. Upon arriving at Taipei Train Station at around 4 p.m., he immediately called the hospital, and Shiy’s butler Kao Chuan told him that Shiy wanted to eat some cantaloupe. After failing to find any in the fruit stalls near the bus station, L suddenly remembered that Shiy liked to drink sugarcane juice. He hurriedly bought some and rushed to the hospital, room no. 919.
It was now about 5:30 p.m., and Shiy’s condition was critical, but stabilized temporarily after doctors gave him an emergency blood transfusion. As Shiy’s other friends left for dinner, L was left alone with his buddy of many years, “Old Shiy” as he used to call him. “Old Shiy,” willful and stubborn as ever, refused to drink his sugarcane juice, saying he only drank sugarcane juice from the East Gate shopping district. So L asked a friend to go and buy the designated juice.
Later, at 9 p.m. that evening, Shiy, his voice already weak, asked L to give Kao Chuan a call, and tell him to bring one of his oil self-portraits to the hospital room. At first, no one knew what Shiy’s intentions were, but later the artist asked for his glasses, a ball pen and sketch pad, indicating that he wanted to write something. With trembling hands, he put the following words on paper, “This Self-portrait in oil is for my best friend, . . . . Shiy De-jinn's last words on August 2, 1981.” The name of the best friend was L’s. Upon seeing the words “last words,” L couldn’t hold back the tears, but Shiy turned over another page of his sketch pad, which showed his own designs for a little cemetery garden. His feeble voice breaking with the effort, he told L, “Take care of this for me, will you!”
As a sign of his gratitude for long years of support and sponsorship, as well as for being a friend and companion, and in sort of recompense for taking care of his funeral arrangements, Shiy, in an exceptional moment of generosity, made a present to L of the Self-portrait in oil he had painted as a young man of 28: a final gift. Shiy insisted on sitting up in his bed during the night, unwilling to let go of life just yet. His struggle against death entered another critical phase around midnight, and around 12:15 it seemed as if he might wrest another day from the hands of fate; yet in the end he lost the struggle with the grim reaper. In the small hours of August 3, one of the great masters of his generation passed away. L was the only person by his side when he left the world.
Shiy De-jinn, one of the most eminent artists in the history of Taiwan’s fine arts, passed away at 58. He had shown considerable artistic promise from early childhood, learning embroidery and traditional flower and bird painting from his mother. He enrolled at the Chongqing National College of Art, gaining the highest score in sketching during the entrance exam, and later studied under Lin Fengmian at the Hangzhou National College of Art, graduating in 1948 with the highest average in the entire school. He left for Taiwan in the same year, where he served as a teacher at the Chiayi Senior High School before moving to Taipei and becoming a professional painter. He excelled at portraits and liked to describe himself as “the best portrait painter in Taiwan.” In 1962, Shiy went abroad with Liao Chi-chun, another outstanding Taiwan painter, to sample the museums and galleries of Europe and North America, and experience firsthand the latest movements and developments in modern art. Eventually, Shiy settled down in Paris for several years, working and holding exhibitions, before returning to Taiwan in 1966.
The knowledge and experience gained from travels in 15 countries helped to establish his status as one of Taiwan’s most renowned artists, and Shiy, who had no problems moving in elevated spheres, soon became something of a celebrity with connections not just in art circles, but also among diplomats and intellectuals, counting among his friends many painters and writers. Back then, L was still a university student in Taipei, a promising young man destined for a career as a scholar and educator, who somehow became acquainted with the famous painter Shiy De-jinn. Before long, a close and lasting friendship developed between them, bolstered by their shared interest in art and culture. In 1967, Shiy made two portraits of L, one a drawing and the other an oil painting, tokens of the strong bond between them.
In the more than ten years that followed, Shiy would frequently go back to Taichung to sketch from life, and L accompanied him on these trips whenever possible. With the artist as a mentor, L’s eyes were opened to a whole new world of artistic enjoyment and appreciation. Shiy would often spend Chinese New Year with L’s family, and was treated like a member of the household on such occasion. After he fell ill, Shiy began to open up even more, talking of things he would rarely mention before. Coming from a well-known literati family in central Taiwan, L had always had a passion for the creative arts, and so he gradually became one of Shiy’s main patrons and a collector of his paintings and calligraphy. Over the decade and a half of his friendship with the painter, he built up an extensive collection of the artist’s work, including some monumental watercolors, ink wash paintings and calligraphic pieces that L had sponsored and bought. Also found in this collection are works by Lin Fengmian and Guan Liang, which L had asked Shiy to purchase on his behalf.
After his death in 1981, L and a group of other good friends organized a very dignified funeral for Shiy, and had a memorial monument and cemetery garden erected in accordance with his wishes. They also established the Shiy De-jinn Foundation, which continues to do much for the recognition of his art and genius. This year, he would have been 90 years old, and his friends are still eager to promote his oeuvre to other connoisseurs of fine art. L has been living abroad for many years, and in his fairly carefree old age he has decided to part with some of his most prized possessions, and give other collectors an opportunity to obtain works by Shiy, thus allowing the great painter’s creative light to keep on burning brightly.
In memory of the deep friendship between Shiy the artist and L the collector, Ravenel on June 2 this year will be holding, as part of its Spring Auction, a Special Auction of Works by Shiy De-jinn from His Close Friend’s Collection of 30 Years, which will feature 23 of the painter’s most important works, long hidden from public view, as well as three paintings by his teachers Lin Fengmian and Guan Liang, works that Shiy knew and treasured. Each of these 26 works is a masterpiece, making this a rare opportunity for collectors. One piece deserving particular attention is Shiy’s 1951 “Self-portrait” in oil, the very same one he presented to L as “a final gift,” and one of only four self-portraits in oil by the artist.
Looking over this lot of outstanding works, L can still recall many little stories connected to their genesis and making. For example, there is “Wu-ling,” the second-largest of Shiy’s monumental ink and color works, both traditional Chinese and impressionist in style. Or there is “Autumn” from 1979, an ink and color sketch that Shiy made when an old house caught his eye while strolling through Taichung’s Qingshui and Shalu areas. And there are other gems, such as the “Self-portrait” mentioned above, and the monumental semi-cursive calligraphy “The Poem Man Jiang Hong in Running Script,” which the National Palace Museum previously borrowed for its Shiy De-jinn Retrospective on the 10th Anniversary of the Artist’s Death. Meanwhile, the rhyming couplets calligraphy “Selected Messages of President Chiang Kai-shek” used to hang in the office of one of Shiy’s close friends, a school principal, giving it historical as well as artistic relevance.
A romantic at heart, Shiy once wrote into one of his paintings the famous poetic words, “True brightness lies in the seasons, genuine fragrance in the soil, and real beauty in the wind and rain.” These words perfectly describe the enduring charm of the artist’s oeuvre, as it is also reflected in the lines of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), “Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.” Shiy lived his whole life for his art, and sublimated the hardships and suffering he experienced into works of unique aesthetic appeal, artistic treasures worthy of repeated appreciation. All this makes the upcoming Special Auction of Works by Shiy De-jinn from His Close Friend’s Collection of 30 Years a fantastic and not-to-be-missed opportunity for art aficionados and collectors. (Text by Odile Chen)
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