Scholar and Pine

A native of Sichuan Province, Zhang Daqian learned to paint flowers as a child from his mother. At the age of nineteen he went to Kyoto to study textile weaving and dyeing. Returning to China in 1919, Zhang lived in Shanghai, Suzhou, and later, Beijing, where he immersed himself in the study of traditional painting. After the Japanese occupied Beijing in 1937, Zhang escaped to Sichuan, where he remained until 1948, except for a two year period between 1941 and 1943 when he studied and made copies of the early Buddhist wall paintings at the cave temples in Dunhuang, Gansu. In Sichuan, Zhang lived primarily at the famous Shangqing Daoist temple outside of Zhengdu, where he was inspired to paint landscape scenes and Daoist figures, untroubled by the war that had engulfed much of China.

Pine trees are a symbol of longevity in China, and this painting was clearly created as a birthday gift for a friend or patron. Zhang's dedication concludes with the wish that the recipient "live as long as the Southern Mountains."