Fang Zhaoling was born in Wuxi, Kiangsu province, China to a prominent industrialist and scholarly family in 1914, studying painting and calligraphy with Chinese masters. In 1937 she moved to Britain to take a Bachelor of Arts Degree at Manchester University. At the outbreak of the Second World War she returned to China, but moved back to the UK in 1953 to participate in a joint touring exhibition with her teacher, the renowned painter and poet Chao Shao-an; she subsequently held several successful solo shows in the UK, including at the Grosvenor and Hugh Moss Galleries.
Painter and calligrapher Fang Zhaoling was born in Wuxi, Kiangsu province, China in 1914 to a prominent industrialist and scholarly family. When she was 11, her father was murdered amid the political and social upheaval in China during the 1920s. She showed her talent in painting and calligraphy at an early age and, with the support of her mother, who provided her daughters with a liberal education, she studied calligraphy and painting with Tao Bofang and Madam Yang Sizhen. She was also tutored by noted Wuxi scholars of the time in English, Chinese and Modern European History. She later enrolled at the Wuxi College of Chinese painting, during which time she studied birds and flowers under Chen Jiucun and landscape painting under Qian Songyan. Fang left for Britain in 1937 to take a Bachelor of Arts Degree at Manchester University, where she was the only female Chinese student. The same year she married her fellow student, Fang Shin-hau, son of a well-known anti-Japanese general. At the outbreak of the Second World War she was forced to interrupt her studies and sought refuge with her husband, first in Norway and then in New York, from where they eventually reached Shanghai. They subsequently made their way to Hong Kong, but following the Japanese invasion they escaped again, drifting from place to place across China. In 1948, after almost 10 years of wandering, the Fangs settled in Hong Kong, but Shin-hau died suddenly just two years later, leaving Zhaoling with eight children to care for. She began running the small trading company her husband had left her and, when she obtained some degree of financial security, she resumed her calligraphy and painting. She subsequently completed her BA studies, undertaken originally at Manchester University, at Hong Kong University and then at Oxford University.
In 1953, she joined her teacher, the renowned Hong Kong painter of the Lingnan School, philosopher and poet Chao Shao-an (Zhao Shao’ang, 1905-1998), to exhibit works at the University of Leeds, the International Club in Manchester and at the Marlborough Gallery in London – one of the first in Europe to show contemporary Chinese art. The Manchester Guardian noted ‘Mrs Fang, a pupil of Professor Chao, follows his manner fairly closely, but her own special gift, which is for colour, and for a very lightly touched effect peculiarly well adapted to the painting of birds and flowers, gives her work very great charm and delicacy’ (A.C.S. 1953, p. 5). In 1956 she exhibited at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967 she travelled frequently between Honk Kong and London (where she maintained a studio), exhibiting regularly at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham, as well as in museums and galleries in London and Edinburgh. As Chao Ling Fang she contributed a landscape in Chinese ink wash to the Royal Academy of Arts annual exhibition in 1966. The following year her work featured in the exhibition Contemporary Chinese Painting, held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. In 1968 the Grosvenor Gallery in London presented Zhaoling’s first English solo show, while the Hugh Moss Gallery mounted three more solo exhibitions for her in 1972, 1978 and 1982. Her work included calligraphies, bright coloured scrolls, as well watercolours and paintings of landscapes, birds and flowers. She painted a wide range of subjects, including China, England's Lake District and the effects of the Gulf War. Fang Zhaoling died in Hong Kong in 2006. Posthumous exhibitions were held at venues including the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2014) and Royal Opera Arcade Gallery, London (2016). Examples of her work in UK public collections can be found in the British Museum, London and National Galleries Scotland.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Fang Zhaoling]
Publications related to [Fang Zhaoling] in the Ben Uri Library