One of the major Lingnan School artists, Guan Shanyue (1912-2000) was born in Yangjiang, Guangdong province. During the 1930s, having graduated from Guangzhou Provincial College of Education, he studied painting with Gao Jianfu (1879-1951) at the Chunshui Art Studio in Guangzhou. During the Second World War (1939-1945) Guan lived in west China and became one of Michael Sullivan’s (1916-2013) artist friends. Guan exchanged lessons with Michael when they were in west China during the 1940s, teaching Michael Chinese painting while Michael taught him English. Michael had seen another version of this painting and admired it. The artist, however, could not part with that painting, so he painted this version to give to Michael. The inscription reads ‘Painted at the request of Mr Sullivan.’
Sullivan, Michael, Modern Chinese Art: The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection, revised edn (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2009), no. 46 on p. 82, illus. p.83 fig. II. 46
Sullivan, Michael, Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), fig. 5.4
Sullivan, Michael, Chinese Art in the Twentieth Century (London: Faber, 1959), fig. 35
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