- Fang Zhaoling, Chinese painter, 92
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HONG KONG (AP) - Fang Zhaoling, a celebrated Chinese painter and mother
of Hong Kong's former No. 2 official Anson Chan, has died at age 92,
news reports said Tuesday.
Fang died Monday in a hospital after efforts to treat her heart
problems failed, the South China Morning Post reported, quoting a
family member who did not want to be named.
Born in 1914 in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi, Fang began studying
painting in her teens with a succession of increasingly prestigious
teachers in China. She started off learning flower-bird painting before
specializing in landscapes.
But her career was disrupted by the births of her eight children, the
death of her husband and the tumult of the Japanese occupation and the
civil war in China.
She resumed in the early '50s and studied under Zhang Daqian, one of
the most eminent Chinese painters of the 20th century.
Throughout the years, Fang held exhibitions around the world, including
the United States, Britain, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, China and
Japan.
Last year, her children, including Anson Chan, Hong Kong's former chief
secretary seen as a key figure in the territory's transition from
British to Chinese rule in 1997, donated 42 of her paintings to the
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
"From China to Europe, Hong Kong and America, her life and work have
been shaped by a tumultuous century of social, political and artistic
change," Michael Knight, the museum's senior curator of Chinese art,
said before last year's exhibition. "Yet Fang's art remains distinctly
rooted in Chinese tradition."
Anson Chan was in sorrow at her mother's death, her husband Archie Chan
told Hong Kong's Commercial Radio.
Chan, who remains highly popular and influential despite quitting as
head of the civil service in 2001, had praised her mother as a role
model for her.
"I owe the strength and optimism in my character entirely to my
mother," the paper quoted Chan as saying in a 1999 speech.