Chang Dai-chien 张大千 / 張大千

Chinese, 1899–1983

BiographyChang Dai-chien (Zhang Daqian; Zhāng Dàqiān 張大千, 1899–1983) was born in Neijiang, Sichuan Province. Originally named Zhāng Zhèngquán 張正權, he grew up in a family which had lost its former scholar-official status but still kept its artistic and scholarly traditions. Chang’s father was once a salt merchant and then a laborer after failing in his business. Skilled in gongbi paintings, Chang’s mother, a devoted Catholic, supported the family by selling her embroideries and paintings. At about the age of nine, in order to help his mother, Chang began to paint under the guidance of his mother and his older sister who was also gifted in painting. In 1911, Chang was enrolled in a Catholic elementary school. Three years later, he went to Qiujing Middle School in Chongqing where Zhāng Wénxiū 張文修, his older brother, had a teaching appointment. Chang became proficient in calligraphy at that time. In 1917, he was sent by his parents to study textile dyeing techniques in Kyoto, Japan. Fascinated by the artistic air he had experienced in Shanghai before leaving for Japan, he kept practicing seal carving and painting as well as reading poems in his spare time. After returning to China in 1919, Chang insisted on moving to Shanghai to study painting under masters there. Despite his parents’ objection, another of his brother Zhāng Shànzǐ 張善子 encouraged him to pursue his artistic career and introduced him to established artists in Shanghai. In the fall of 1919, Chang became a student of Zēng Xī 曾熙 (1861–1930) and then Lǐ Ruìqīng 李瑞清 (1867–1920), both of whom were prominent calligraphers, poets and connoisseurs. In December, Chang decided to become a monk at Chanding Temple in Songjiang, Shanghai, where he followed the temple abbot, Yìlín 逸琳, to practice Buddhism. Chang’s Buddhist name, Dàiqiān 大千, was given by Yìlín. After about one hundred days’ life as an acolyte, he resumed secular life. Following the instructions of Zēng and Lǐ, Chang was able to develop his own style after comprehensively studying the calligraphy of various prominent schools throughout history. He also benefited from the study of calligraphy’s origin through copying scripts and stela inscriptions of Han and Northern Dynasties. He became captivated by the paintings of Shítāo 石濤 (1642–1707) and Bādà Shānrén 八大山人 (1626–1705), in which he found a free spirit that resonated with his own personality. Chang thoroughly copied their paintings in the collections of his teachers, Zēng and Lǐ, and meticulously studied their styles as well as painting theories. The origins of Chang’s later notoriety as a forger can perhaps be traced to this time, when he frequently copied paintings by ancient masters or forged lost paintings to exchange for real ones from collectors. Chang’s forgeries of Shítāo’s works were so hard to identify that even his teachers Zēng and Lǐ were deceived by them.

Chang held his first one-person exhibition in Shanghai in 1925. All his paintings exhibited were sold out within several days. In the same year, he and his brother, Zhāng Shànzǐ, opened their atelier, Dà Fēng Táng 大風堂, and taught over one hundred students through 1980s. Chang went on his first trip to Huangshan 黄山 (“Yellow Mountain”) in 1927, after which the mountainous region became a lifelong inspiration for his paintings and poems. In 1931, he made his second visit to Huangshan, during which he and Shànzǐ took over three hundred photographs. Later they published their first album including twelve of these photographs, and Chang went on to win the gold prize a photograph he submitted to the World Expo in Belgium. He moved to a studio in Wangshi Yuan 网师园 (“The Master of Nets Garden”) in Suzhou with Shànzǐ in 1932. In 1935, Chang was invited by the prominent painter Xǘ Bēihóng 徐悲鴻 (1895–1953) to teach at the National Central University in Nanjing for one year. Having been fascinated by Buddhist art for a long time, he left for the isolated desert oasis of Dunhuang in 1941 to see the famous Buddhist murals in the Mogao Caves and spent two and a half years there copying as well as numbering the murals with assistance of Tibetan monk-painters. Chang’s copies of these murals were exhibited and published in the following years, successfully reviving the state’s interest in studying and preserving the art of Dunhuang. During his visit to India in 1950, he also studied and copied murals in Ajanta and Darjeeling. Chang moved to Godoy Cruz, Argentina in 1952 and to Brazil subsequently in 1954. After living in California from 1968 to 1976, he settled down in Taipei, Taiwan, where he built a residence called Moye Jingshe 摩耶精舍 (“The Abode of Maya”). Chang died in Taipei in 1983.

Zimeng Xiang

Sources:

Bai, Wei. Hua Tan Ju Jian – Zhang Da Qian. Lan Zhou: Lan Zhou University Press, 1997. http://bjzc.org/lib/27/wxls/ts027038.pdf.

Fu, Shen C. Y. Challenging the Past: The Paintings of Chang Dai-Chien. Translated by Stephen D. Allee and Jan Stuart. Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2000.