Pan Yuliang 潘玉良 (1895-1977) has been hailed as one of the most influential artists and modern art educators of 20th century China, renown for being the first woman in the country to paint in the Western style. Born in Yangzhao, China, she was sold to a brothel by her maternal uncle after the death of her parents at age 14 and raised to be a prostitute. In 1913, she met and married the wealthy customs official Pan Zanhua, who bought her freedom. That same year they moved to Shanghai where she started to study drawing and was eventually accepted into the Western Art department at the Shanghai Art Academy as one of the first women in their co-ed class. During her time studying painting, she was often ostracized by her peers due to her “lowly” background as the opposite of the “modern Shanghai Lady”. 

Having gained acceptance to the Sino-Franco College in Lyon, which held its first recruitment in China in 1921, she quit the Shanghai Art Academy to travel and study Impressionist style painting in France. She also studied at the Ecole National des Beaux Arts in Lyon and the Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris. In 1925, she became the first Chinese artist to receive the prestigious Rome Scholarship to study at the Academia di Belle Arti in Rome, Italy. Pan Yuliang is best known for her paintings of the female nude, a consistent theme in her work. Her work was considered improper and controversial, and was heavily criticized in China by government officials and conservative critics alike. Despite this, Pan continued to create various female nudes, often using herself as a model. In 1937, one of her paintings was defaced with the words ‘A prostitute's tribute to her patron’. Months later, she left for France, never to return to China again. 

She lived and worked in Paris for the next 40 years. She joined the faculty of the École des Beaux Arts and she was elected chairman of the Chinese Art Association. Her drawings and paintings were internationally exhibited, and often throughout Europe and the U.S. However, she had difficulty selling her art and refused to be bound contractually to art dealers in Europe. Towards the end of her life, Pan was living in poverty and alienated from both French and Chinese Art communities. In France, she could not escape the label of being a Chinese and foreign painter, making her less relevant to mainstream audiences, and she spent too much time outside of China to be a dominant participant within the Chinese arts community. 

Pan Yuliang died in 1977 but her legacy continues as one of the first female painters to consider the nude female Asian body as subject, and one of the first artists to merge Western compositions with Chinese brush and ink style painting. 

I found Pan Yuliang while researching the history of nude Asian women in the visual arts. I had trouble finding sources, and realised that the history of nude women in Asian art was predictably quite brief. I realized that I actually saw her work a few years ago back in Hong Kong. I thought her paintings were beautiful and I saw myself in many of her portraits, connecting with her attempt to explore her own body and self through her work. 

I am inspired by Pan Yulaing’s later years when she continued to paint nudes, defying social and governmental expectations. Pan was likely unable to pay for models, or to find Asian women to model for her paintings, so used her own figure as reference for most of her paintings -- even in cases where the face bears no resemblance to the artist. While in China, she was said to have visited public bathhouses to find her subjects, as drawing nudes was still very taboo. 

I chose to interpret and react to her work through my own in a more aggressive and combative manner. I felt represented physically but not mentally. I saw many of her subjects as indifferent and passive and wanted to shift that disposition. In her compositional scenes, many of the women languish in seemingly platonic relationships, in their own bubble, unaware or unbothered by a viewer. My figures are more assertive and antagonistic than the subjects I perceive in her paintings. I wanted her characters to have power through their gazes, a louder and more challenging voice. As I recreated her work, I wanted to mirror her paintings with my own body, but I wanted to assert my own power by challenging the viewer, making them aware of themselves, and aware that I am simultaneously looking at them. Pan Yuliang’s intent was to move the woman’s body from object to subject. I also want to move the body from the object to a subject, but as I turn my gaze back onto the viewer, I, in turn, make them (the viewer) into an object. It is my way of making myself a part of the conversation.