Tchun-pi Fan

*1898 ✝1986 | China

Fang Junbi was born in Fuzhou in 1898 to a wealthy and progressive family of merchants. Her brother Shengdong was one of the martyr heroes of the Guangzhou uprising of 1911. After the 1911 revolution, her sister Junying, who was close to anti-imperial groups, travelled to France to study, in 1912. Fang Junbi, then 14 years old, accompanied her. There, she became associated with members of liberal circles who had adopted Western culture, and studied under the reformist scholar Cai Yuanpei and the revolutionary Wang Jingwei. She felt drawn to art and began studying Western techniques at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1917, before the bombardment of the First World War forced her to pursue her training at the École des beaux-arts in Bordeaux. Upon returning to the French capital in 1920, she became the first Chinese female student to enter the École des beaux-arts in Paris, where she met the painter Xu Beihong. Two years later, she married the poet and politician Zeng Zhongming. In 1924, she was the first Chinese female artist to have her work shown at the Salon Annuel des Artistes Français, where she made a positive first impression with her Flute Player (1924).