Zhang Daofan was born in Kuichou (now Guizhou), China in 1897, graduating from Tianjin Nankai High School. Between 1921 and 1924 he studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, the first Chinese student to be admitted to study there. After a period at the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Daofan returned to China, where he embarked on a highly successful career as the architect of cultural policies of the Chinese Nationalist Government.
Painter, writer and politician Zhang Daofan was born in Kuichou (now Guizhou), China in 1897. He graduated from Tianjin Nankai High School, during which time he joined the Chinese Revolutionary Party.
In 1920 he went to study in Europe with the financial aid from the Chinese government. He trained at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London between 1921 and 1924, the first Chinese student to be admitted to study there (Huang 2019, p. 399). During this time, he was elected director-general of the London branch of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) in 1923. In the same year, he proposed organising an exhibition of contemporary Chinese painting in London with the aim of promoting Sino-British relations and artistic exchange. Although welcomed by important British artists such as Henry Tonks and Roger Fry, this idea was not supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education. The exhibition would eventually take place 20 years later, in 1943, when at the request of the Chinese Ministry of Information a touring exhibition of modern Chinese paintings was organised by the British Council, with the assistance of the diplomat Sir Malcolm Robertson, art critics Clive Bell and Sir Herbert Read, and Daofang himself, who selected the exhibits (Huang 2019, pp. 389).
In 1924 Daofang moved to France where he studied at the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris until 1926, joining painter Xu Beihong and other Chinese artists in the Celestial Hound Society (Tiangou hui), a loosely formed art association which had its meeting place at the café Le Chat Noir (Jin 2020, p. xiv). After his return to China in 1926, Daofang embarked on a highly successful career as the architect of cultural policies of the Chinese Nationalist Government. In 1942 he was elected chairman of the Central Cultural Movement Committee and wielded a heavy conservative influence in Nationalist art circles and in 1946 the Nationalist government set up the Shanghai Art Society under his patronage. Daofang became a member of the Sino-British Cultural Association in Nanking, founded in 1933 to facilitate academic and cultural links between the two countries, and whose ‘first and most important’ activity was ‘the invitation of British scientists and savants to China as lecturers’ (The North China Herald 1934, p. 452). Daofang subsequently held senior positions in different units of the Chinese Nationalist Government, including the Department of Agriculture and Labour, Ministry of Communications, Ministry of the Interior, and Ministry of Education, as well as the Kuomintang Central Social Affairs Bureau and Propaganda Bureau. He continued to be involved in the arts, publishing several books on fine art and painting and curating the exhibition Art from Fighting China held at MoMA, New York in 1942. Zhang Daofang died in Taipei, Taiwan Province, Republic of China in 1967. His work is not currently represented in UK public collections.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Zhang Daofan]
Publications related to [Zhang Daofan] in the Ben Uri Library