Fifty-eight years ago in an obscure village of Szechwan Province in southwest China, a modestly well off Chinese couple was blessed with a manchild, hope and pride of every Chinese home. He was given the name of Chang Shan-tse (“Good Fellow”). Five years later the mother, yielding to her small son’s plea for playmates, secured for him three vigorous tiger cubs with which the infant not only played, but slept and ate.
Soon Chang was making drawings of their pranks and slithering movements, studying feline anatomy with a keen and youthful eye. Chang’s Roman Catholic mother, an informed amateur of her country’s art, never sent him to school. Instead, his fresh talent was nourished by observing nature and studying the old Chinese masters. By the time he reached 16, Chang was also writing poems, verse so good that it attracted the attention of distinguished Chinese men of letters. This was an omen not to be taken lightly, for no Chinese artist may hope to succeed unless he is also a poet, and no poet can reach top rank unless he is capable of illustrating his works visually.
When he grew up Chang moved to Chungking, married, became the “tiger painter” of his people. Even as a young man he was recognized as unsurpassed among China’s 20th Century painter-poets. And throughout a 50-year career important breeders never failed to keep him supplied with the finest tigers available. One pet insisted upon acting as a pillow for Chang and his little daughter at night, another made nocturnal excursions to the bedroom for regular handouts of eggs.
Chang’s tigers never hurt anyone, but last year the enemies of Chang’s people, the Japanese, flew their planes over
Chungking and when they flew away they left many of Chang’s people dead behind them—and all of Chang’s tigers. Chang left Chungking.
Last week in Manhattan’s Chinatown, eminent Chinese, art lovers, sympathizers gathered in Lichee Wan’s Restaurant to pay respects to an aging and ailing little thin-bearded man with a quick smile, bright eyes and fleet gestures—Chang Shan-tse of Chungking. His mission: to raise money to buy medical supplies for beleaguered China. In a garret studio, from 6 a. m. until nightfall he could be found feverishly painting $$o-up duplicates of water colors whose originals had brought $1,500 in China. Their soft mauves, greens and umbers, their economically limned designs of rocky landscapes, animals and religious themes were directly descended from the great centuries of Chinese art.
The best, of course, were tiger pictures, and the best of the tiger pictures was the vast 0 China, Roar Like These Tigers panel which last spring crowded 3,000 visitors into the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, helped bring its creator a decoration from President Lebrun of France. Its 21 down-leaping tigers represent China’s war-awakened provinces. Of their models, said Chang: “It is just as well about the tigers’ dying. I am an old man and tigers need a strong master; hereafter I paint from memory.”
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