PROVENANCE: Acquired from a member of the Shiy De-jinn Foundation Private collection, Asia

ILLUSTRATED: The Commemorative Collections of Shiy De-jinn (II) Oil Painting, Taiwan Museum of Art, Taichung, 1994, color illustrated, p. 245 (with the title of "Lady in Black")

Shiy De-jinn was an outstanding portrait painter; as a student, he often painted his classmates and the objects of his affections. As a young man, he always carried a sketching pad around with him, so that if he saw anything that moved him, he could sketch it straightaway. Shiy had great confidence in his own ability as a portrait-painter, and is on record as having boasted that he was “the best portrait-painter in Taiwan.” Shiy developed a fresh approach to the creation of portraits, seeking to find just the right angle to display the subject’s beauty to best effect. As he saw it, a great portrait could constitute a genuine, eternal work of art.

In 1955, Shiy De-jinn began working full-time as an artist. At the time, this was no easy task; the art critic Hsiao Chong-ray noted that “Shiy De-jinn was actually the first professional artist in Taiwan.” Besides taking on commissions to paint portraits, Shiy also produced portraits of his friends for which he was not paid. Shiy’s friends in Taiwan’s artistic and cultural circles in the 1960s and 1970s included the poet Chou Meng-tieh, the writers Tsao Yu-fang and Hua Yen, the actress Tang Pao-yun, and the painters Lee Teh and Wu Hao. All of these friends and acquaintances became “models” for portraits by Shiy; this portrait of Tian Man-shi is one of the portraits that Shiy produced during this period.

Tian Man-shi was both a poet and a painter, and was renowned as one of the leading female literary and artistic figures among the large number of Chinese citizens that sought refuge in Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War. Born in Yancheng in China’s Henan Province in 1926, Tian died in Taipei, Taiwan in 2006. Coming from a wealthy family, Tian was able to study in Germany and Korea; she later studied landscape painting under Huang Chun-pi. A multi-talented, highly-cultivated artist with a wide circle of friends, Tian was an important figure in literary and artistic circles in Taiwan. This oil painting, “Portrait of the Painter Tian Manshi,” was completed by Shiy De-jinn in 1961. Tian was 35 at the time, and yet in this portrait she seems somehow ageless, with her chi-pao dress, shawl, jade bracelet and jadeite ring. Refined and elegant, it is clear from her expression that she considered herself the equal of any man.

In his article “On Portraiture,” Shiy De-jinn made the following comment: “A photograph can only portray how someone looks from one particular angle at one particular instant in time! A painted portrait is an image based on the artist’s subjective consciousness, and on their observation of the subject from multiple viewpoints over an extended period of time, so of course a portrait is much more complex, and is much broader in scope. A good portrait painter can examine your soul, capture your personality, bring across your character, and reveal those parts of your identity that you yourself are not aware of. An experienced portrait painter is like a fortune-teller, using their brush to trace out the course of your life.”

Shiy De-jinn delighted in painting portraits, and in the opportunities that it provided for exploration, and for uncovering the truth behind the masks that people wear over their own identities. He continued painting portraits throughout his life, painting a wide range of different kinds of people – healthy young men, elderly people whose faces show the ravages of time, elegant society women. However, Shiy was actually quite choosy in his selection of subjects for portrait painting; he had no interest in painting someone whose face he felt was too ordinary or commonplace. Shiy felt that “A person’s life experience, the marks of time, their occupation, their social status, their background, and the wisdom that they have accumulated – all of this should be reflected in the portrait.” “Portrait of the Painter Tian Man-shi” reflects this attitude towards portraiture, bringing across the refinement and self-assurance of this female artist to great effect. Shiy’s best-known work, “Boy in Red,” was completed shortly after this painting, in 1962. The series of works that Shiy created around this time constitute a priceless record of an era of cultural and artistic ferment in Taiwan.