An exhibition of a figure-painting master's work offers an insight into his spiritual world, Lin Qi reports.

Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Du Fu, who's regarded as one of the greatest, would not have expected to become the subject of an online pop culture trend in 2012, the 1,300th anniversary of his birth year.

People created graffiti-style memos, mostly based on a monochromatic ink portrait of him, to mock or simply for fun, and these went viral on social media. The phenomenon, referred to as "Du Fu is so busy", drew divided responses among the public. Some viewed it disrespectful and others, especially the younger generation, said it was just kidding and meanwhile, gave the eighth-century poet a modern revival.

The reason that many people chose the same portrait to create was because the work appeared in middle school textbooks to go with one of Du's poems, and it would pop up in people's minds once the poet was mentioned.

Few noticed, though, that it was Jiang Zhaohe (1904-89) who made this signature portraiture that became so widely circulated.

And they would be even more surprised to know that Jiang used his own face as the model for his imagined portrait of Du.

Now, more details of how Jiang created one of his most successful works and his achievements as a leader in the figure painting genre of modern Chinese ink are revealed at an ongoing exhibition in Beijing.

Gazing Into the Vast Expanse, a new show mounted by Taikang Art Museum, runs at its venue in the capital's bustling central business area through to May 9.

In memory of the 120th anniversary of Jiang's birth, it navigates the artist's life and career: The vicissitudes of the country in the 20th century shaped his life path to become a painter working for his people, and when fulfilling this commitment, he meanwhile reformed the genre of classical Chinese painting.

A copy of the Du portrait and several other works of a similar composition that Jiang made as drafts are on display. The original piece is now in the collection of the National Museum of China in Beijing.

Shared concerns

Jiang made the work in 1959 as a commission from the newly built National Museum of Chinese History, which in 2003 merged into the National Museum of China. Du wrote about the political and social turmoil he was thrown into, as well as the plight of ordinary people, which gave his work a humanitarian hue.

To echo this strong concern for the people, Jiang depicted the poet sitting on a rock.

His bony jaw, narrow eyes and frowning eyebrows show an aged man still worried about the fate of his nation and people. He gazes into the distance, and wind blows his thin gray hair, accentuating a solemn mood and a loneliness that engulfs him.

The work has created a resonance among its viewers, as Jiang intended. He shared with Du a sympathy for ordinary people, says Ruan Jingjing, a co-curator of the exhibition.

At 16, Jiang left his home in Luxian, a small county in Sichuan province, and arrived in Shanghai to make his way.

He worked odd jobs, including at photo studios and in department stores.

"Shanghai was at the time a major economic and cultural center to pioneer the trends in education, literature, arts, cinema and theater, among others," Ruan says.

"Jiang began with designing signboards and window displays, and then, nurtured by Shanghai's diverse cultural scenes in pace with international trends, he moved on to create more art styles."

Jiang rose to be a leading figure in commercial art and design in the 1920s in Shanghai, together with other modern artists such as Ye Qianyu and Zhang Guangyu. His works were of dynamism and reflected a modern aspect.

He engaged in advertisements, fashion design and photography to be sensitive to pop culture. In the meantime, he learned Chinese ink and oil painting, as well as sculpture, to compare the differences and similarities in presentation of Chinese and Western art.

The absorption of all these elements of art and design ushered Jiang into the next stage — inarguably the most accomplished — of his art and career, modern ink figure painting through which he echoed his love for people.

The outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) upended Jiang's life.

He lost jobs and moved frequently to escape the fighting.

He gradually focused on ink figure painting, and with compassion and benevolence, he depicted the lives of those suffering in the chaos, such as mothers begging for food and child vendors on the streets.

One work from this time, which in following years has been considered an iconic piece, is Liu Min Tu (Portrait of Refugees), made in 1943 and styled after the horizontal scroll of Chinese painting. It was done on a 27-meter-long and 2-meter-high paper scroll and shows more than 100 figures — men and women, the young and the old, parents and children — who fell victim to the ravages of war.

The piece was, however, torn into two pieces and only the first 12-meter part of it survives. In 1998, it was donated by Jiang's family to the National Art Museum of China.

An animated version of this piece, together with a draft of it, is on show at the Taikang exhibition.

Jiang once said of the painting: "Only did the underprivileged ones in this world understand what I painted. The ones I felt pity for were those dying of starvation on the roadside."

He also made works to inspire hope of triumph and peace. An example at the exhibition is New Year Wishes, a work from 1940 in which he portrayed a young woman in a red cheongsam dress, delivering the solemnity of cultural traditions, a festive mood and the vigor of youth.

New portraiture

Jiang, who basically taught himself to paint, sculpt and design, became a professor of Chinese painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1950, under the deanship of Xu Beihong, another great modern artist who favored a realistic approach to art.

Jiang continued to hail the ordinary in creation.

His subjects were farmers and workers engaged in the booming construction after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and families spending time together in an era of peace.

Meanwhile, he blazed a new trail in Chinese figure painting, beginning in the 1950s and through to the 1980s, the late years of his life: doing portraits of ancient luminaries which he saw as hugely important to carry on the country's history and cultural legacies.

He created images of figures from literature and science living centuries back, and the Du Fu portraits were from this time. Other subjects included Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai and Bai Juyi, Su Dongpo of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Li Shizhen, the 16th-century pharmacologist who authored Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica), and Zhang Heng, the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) scientist who invented the seismoscope for earthquake registering.

These works have been featured in school books, magazines and stamps and at exhibitions at public museums, which have become the collective imagery for generations of Chinese and an integral part of the visual art system of modern China.

And they show Jiang's longtime investments in profiling figures, by combining the outlining techniques of Chinese ink art and the three-dimensional effect of Western art, which can be traced back to his years of exploration in Shanghai in the 1930s.

Back then, his gift and diligence already impressed artists of eminence such as Qi Baishi who spoke highly of Jiang's figure paintings, saying, "integrating Chinese brushwork with foreign approaches, the work claims uniqueness of a kind, and I much admire it".

Ruan, the curator, says the exhibition title is from an inscription Jiang left on a self-portrait made in 1983, in which he gazed into the distance with a smile, "recollecting in his mind the vicissitudes his country and people had experienced, and the works he had produced to document the changes of time".

Jiang once said: "I don't know what art is for in life. Is it like a fine wine, or a bowl of bitter tea? If it is the latter, I will prepare one myself, with all earnestness, and present it to the people."