Pan Yuliang: Between Two Worlds, Beyond Borders
- Cabinet Gauchet Art Asiatique
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Among the great figures of modern Chinese art, Pan Yuliang (1895–1977) occupies a special place. Trained in China and Europe, an artist in q
Constantly striving for freedom, she has developed a deeply personal pictorial language, somewhere between Eastern tradition and Western modernity. Her career, marked by ruptures, displacements and bold choices, makes her one of the first Chinese female painters to establish herself on the international scene.
Born in 1895 in Jiangsu province, Pan Yuliang (born Chen Xiuqing) lost her parents at a young age. Left to fend for herself, she was sold to a brothel, then bought by Pan Zanhua, a civil servant and progressive intellectual, who would become her husband and supporter. She adopted his name, began studying, and entered the Shanghai School of Fine Arts in 1920. She became interested in Western painting early on and developed a taste for experimentation and life drawing.
In 1921, she received a scholarship to study in France. She first attended the Franco-Chinese Institute in Lyon, then the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1925, she was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where she perfected her technique and won several awards. Upon her return to China in 1929, she became a professor at the Shanghai School of Fine Arts and the National University of Nanjing, actively contributing to the introduction of Western painting into the Chinese artistic landscape.
But her art was disturbing: her female nudes shocked a section of conservative society. In 1937, faced with the Japanese invasion and growing hostility, she decided to return to Paris, where she would spend the last 40 years of her life.
Pan Yuliang's work is characterized by an original hybridization of Western techniques (oil on canvas, perspective, bright colors) and Eastern sensibilities (purity of line, interiority, poetic composition). Her painting draws its inspiration from the human figure—particularly the female figure—which she depicts with great formal freedom and notable emotional intensity. She is also recognized for her self-portraits, both assertive and introspective, and her numerous scenes of daily life and nature.
Influenced by the Fauves, Matisse, and Symbolism, Pan Yuliang developed a luminous, fluid palette and a highly personal touch. She also used ink and watercolor, in a desire to synthesize her Chinese roots and her European background. This positioning made her both a marginal and pioneering figure: too Western for 1930s China, too foreign for post-war artistic Paris, she evolved on the margins, but continued to create with consistency and rigor.
During her lifetime, Pan Yuliang exhibited regularly in France and internationally—in Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, and the United States. She was elected president of the Association of Chinese Artists in France, and although living modestly, she remained active until the end of her life. She died in Paris in 1977, in relative obscurity.
Since the 1980s, her work has been gradually rediscovered. Numerous exhibitions have been devoted to her in China, and a significant portion of her works have been repatriated to the National Museum of Fine Arts of China in Beijing and to the Anhui Provincial Museum . Today, she is recognized as a key figure in modern Chinese art, at the intersection of femininity, exile, and free creation.
Please do not hesitate to contact us for any request for expertise or analysis of works related to Pan Yuliang or other Asian modernist artists active in France.
→ Coming soon
On June 13, 2025 , an exceptional work by Pan Yuliang will be sold at the Asian Art auction in collaboration with Cannes Enchères . Stay tuned!
Bibliography
Andrews, Julia F., & Shen, Kuiyi. The Art of Modern China . University of California Press, 2012.
Vance, Brigid E. “Pan Yuliang’s Painted Self.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review , vol. 26, 2018.
McNair, Amy (ed.). Modern Chinese Artists: A Biographical Dictionary . University of Hawaii Press, 2007.
Exhibition catalog Pan Yuliang: A Journey to Silence , Cernuschi Museum & National Museum of China, 2001.
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