84-Year-Old Artist Donates Masterpieces to Hometown

Shou Chongde Art Museum was unveiled on May 25， 1929 in Zhuji， a city in eastern Zhejiang The museum houses a precious collection of 100 artworks do-nated by Shou Chongde， an artist born in 1927 and native of Zhuji Zhuji is famous in the history of Chinese art because in the Yuan (1279-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties， Zhu produced three great art-ists: Yang Weizhen (1296-1370)， Wang Mian (1287-1359) and Chen Hongshou (1598-1652) However， the city had felt somewhat embarrassed about itself， for it had never got any artwork by the Big Three that makes the city feel so proud Shou’s donation has changed city’s history Of the 100， ten are paintings by famous ancients， including one by Chen Hongshou These paintings are so valuable that you would need to sell a whole city to raise funds to buy them， as a Chinese saying goes The big-hearted artist had previously donated two paintings to Zhejiang Art Museum， one being an ancient artwork by Shi Tao (1630-1724) and the other being a masterpiece jointly created by Pan Tianshou (1898-1971) and Shou The rest of the donated paintings were artworks by Shou and his wife and two sons

Shou Chongde was born in a village in Zhuji in August 1927 He moved to Xi’an， the capital city of northwestern China’s Shaanxi Province， with his father in 1942 The 15-year-old junior high school student held an individual art exhibition， which caused a sensation in the ancient city In 1944， the 17-year-old traveled alone all the way to Chongqing for further studies of art

Chongqing， then the wartime capital of China， was a place where high-profile art-ists gathered Shou met with Pan Tianshou He went to see the master whenever he had time Under the guidance of Pan， Shou created many paintings More than 20 of them had Pan’s inscriptions The master and the disciple also jointly created two paintings Shou also met with Fu Baoshi (1904-1965)， a landscape-painting master The friendship between the two lasted for decades After Fu passed away and his family ran into financial difficulties during the following Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)， Shou sent his 12 month salaries to his master’s wife

With Pan’s reference， Shou entered an art school and began training under the guidance of Lu Fengzi， a prominent artist and art educator Shou matured rapidly in art His two paintings created at 19 were exhibited in USA and Britain At 20， he showed his artworks at an exhibition which highlighted greatest names of the time such as Qi Baishi， Zhang Da Qian， Xu Beihong， Lu Fengzi， Pan Tianshou， Fu Baoshi In 1948， the 21-year-old artist went to see Huang Binhong (1864-1955) in Hangzhou， the landscape master warmly received the young artist and advised him to travel extensive-ly and observe nature closely

Shou came back to Zhejiang and became an art teacher after his graduation from art school He became Chi-na’s first special-class art teacher at normal school level in 1957

He had many offers to teach at colleges and universities， but unfortunately， he was not able to go for various reasons In the summer of 1959， Pan Tianshou made all the arrangements to transfer Shou to teach at Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts， the pred-ecessor of the present-day China Academy of Art In October 1963， he was to transfer to Hangzhou to work for Zhejiang Acad-emy of Traditional Chinese Painting， but he was instructed to put an art education textbook together and he was unable to go So he worked at normal schools until his retirement

Although a normal school teacher， Shou was highly creative and productive during his 36-year teacher’s career “The Xin’an River Hydroelectric Power Station” won a prize of excellence at the 3rd National Exhibition for Fine Arts in 1959 The masterwork went into the collection of the National Museum His three watercolors were granted Excellent Creation Awards at the first National Watercolors Exhibition in 1996 Over decades， Shou created hun-dreds of paintings， some in collections of art museums and government agencies

Shou feels that his art museum in his hometown is a confirmation of his lifelong artistic pursuit and is the right place to house his private collection， his artworks and those by his wife and two sons

Shou Chongde has set up an art educa-tion fund in his name to return the gen-erosity of his fellow people in Zhuji and encourage young artists to pursue art □