Chiu Ya-tsai was a painter of great literary talent who wrote several novels and also received a literary award. His artistic life began with comic strips; he learned to paint at thirty, and began writing at the age of thirty-five. In his works on paper and canvas, he began by observing people. The subjects of both his novels and paintings almost invariably revolve around people.

Chiu’s portraits prioritize not strict formal resemblance, but the expression of affections through freehand strokes, constructing the inner world of the subjects beyond apparent emotions. His use of large blocks of solid, flat color for backdrops—at times adding bits of adorning elements in contrasting colors—serve to highlight the subject in the foreground. These techniques were derived from European modernist painters such as Amedeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso. Chiu’s delicate outlines of faces, meanwhile, inherit the figure painting traditions of Tang Dynasty China. The facial features display the artist’s familiarity with the forms and techniques of modern Western art, while exquisitely incorporating the spirit of literati paintings in the Eastern tradition.

This portrait is entitled Man in Blue. The subject possesses a slim, elongated figure, with a sense of melancholy and detachment visible in his eyes. His expression is composed and self-possessed, exuding the graceful tranquility of Eastern literati, while the simplicity in lines and color create a sense of pensiveness and solitude. The artist thus depicted the silence of solitary souls in facing conflicts between ideals and realities, the subjects’ moral integrity and dignified elegance evident in his paintings.