Pan Tianshou

Pan Tianshou (1897-1971), Chinese painter, art educator, and art theorist who was one of the most important traditional Chinese painters of the 20th century, following Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi and Huang Binhong, promoted the development of Chinese painting.

Pan was born into a peasant family in Ninghai County, Zhejiang Province in 1807. His parents gave him the name Tianshou (meaning endowed by the heaven, later changed to Tianshou meaning live as long as the heaven). His styled name was Dayi, alias Ashou, but he often used Leipuotoufeng Shouzhe when he signed his later works. Pan's family lived in a direly poor situation since he was young, but he deeply loved calligraphy and painting. Through self-teaching, he learned the art of painting by imitating the works of Xu Wei, Zhu Da and Shi Tao. Later, he took democratic educators Li Shutong, Jing Hengyi, etc., as his teachers. In 1923, he and Mr. Zhu Wenyun established China's first department of Chinese paintings at the Shanghai School of Fine Arts. He later taught at the National School of Arts, the East China branch of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. He was indisputably one of the principal founders in the teaching of modern Chinese painting. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as the president of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts and vice-president of Zhejiang Association of Artists. He died in 1971.

Pan Tianshou spent the better part of his life in painting and teaching of painting. He is good at freehand brushwork. His paintings on flowers, birds, mountains and waters have the style of the ancient masters like Xu Wei, Zhu Song and Shi Tao, as well as features of the modern artist Wu Changsuo. He is skilled in 'creating suspense' and 'breaking suspense' in the layout of his paintings. Radiating from his brushes is the splendor of gold and stone, profound and lofty. With appropriate use of different paints and colors, his painting as a whole exhibits innate strength. He tapped the artistic method of Chinese painting which emphasized lines to the most. With his unique appreciation and understanding on arts, he blazed new trails in the structure and composition of the Chinese painting, making his works full of inspiration and modern senses. Pan Tianshou establishes his own painting style. His works were a kind of compendium of traditional Chinese paintings blending poems, calligraphy, painting and seal. He is also good at painting people, and is expert in finger painting. Besides, he is also a theorist on the painting history and the art of painting and comes up with witty remarks from time to time. In the 'Essays on Painting in Tingtian Pavilion', he wrote 'A mountain loses its spirit without cloud, loses its peculiarity without stones, loses its elegance without trees, and loses its life without water', and 'In painting, one should concentrate the mind, and hold the breath: with concentration of the mind, serenity is maintained; with the breath held up, preciseness is attained. One should be as serene as an old monk in meditation, and be as precise as a silk worm in spitting silk. The spirit and real fun of painting are from nature and beyond the brushes and paints'. Many of his remarks were also included in works like 'History of Chinese Fine Arts', 'On Seal-carvings'.

Besides introducing Mr. Pan Tianshou's artistic life and the painting theory that develops a school of his own, this documentary uses a large space and lots of rare historical shots to show elegance romantic charm that the master draws a picture in his own hand, with visual languages, reveals his composition and drawing techniques of representative works.

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