A Taiwanese painter of the older generation, Chen Te-Wang spent his whole life studying the form, color, and space of Western painting, exploring his own world in painting from the tradition. During his whole life, he wrote handsomely concerning his thoughts on Western painting. Edited by Wang Wei-kwang, his essays are collected in Chen Te-Wang On Painting, in which every word is a gem, the crystal of his experience in creation during his entire life. Regarding himself as a researcher-painter, during his lifetime, Chen's only fun was to paint. Even when he was lying on the sick bed, slim because of illness, he still wanted to paint. In his latter years, he kept producing mature works at his pinnacle. Before he passed away, he waved his hand in the air, as a paintbrush, airing his melancholy that he still had so many things to paint in his mind. Such a dedicated and obstinate painter always gives people tranquility and profoundness in the spiritual world with his paintings!

Born in Yong Le Ting, which is Dihua Street now, his family was engaged in the trade of gold. Since childhood, he had already shown his enthusiasm in painting. In 1926, he once went to Tianjin, China and studied at the Tonwen Academy. Originally, he prepared to further his study at the Peking Fine Art School, but in vain. He returned to Taipei immediately. At first, he studied watercolor painting with Kinichiro Ishikawa; then, he attended Da-Dao-Cheng Research Western Painting Institute for a year. In 1929, with the encouragement from his painter-friends, he set out for Tokyo, Japan. At that time, Chen Te-wang did not pay any high acclaim to the mainstream paintings in the Imperial Exhibition. On the contrary, he preferred the Fauvist paintings in the Second Department Society. Likewise, he refused to attend any art school. Instead, he studied sketching at privately operated institutes, as Hongu Art Insitute and Nika Art Institute Moreover, he studied painting with a few painters in the alternative styles. In 1941, because of the Pearl Harbor Incident, he returned to Taipei. He spent some 12 years studying painting in Japan.

With enthusiasm of Western painting, he never imitated and followed people blindly; rather, he would insist on finding his own path. Returning to Taiwan, Chen Te-wang revised the Western painting techniques he learned from Japan because he was dissatisfied with the Japanese's "imitation of appearance" only, searching for the essence of the art. Under his endeavor in learning and painting, his paintings were short-listed in the Taiwan Exhibition and Governor-General Exhibition many times. On the teaching post, Chen presented many thoughts on painting. He emphasized on foundation, sketch, form, and spatial alignment. Once he said, "Foundation is an understanding of form." "Foundation is an absolute requirement...." "Sketch should be conducted with severity ten times more." He believed that accurate research was more important than creation. Like Céranne, he dedicated his whole life in exploring painting and nature, insisting on the natural overflow of innermost feeling, without leaving the concrete form behind.

Chen contributed his whole life to the study of art. Due to the necessity of gathering forces of different groups to improve the undesirable art environment in Taiwan, he joined the Taiyang Fine Arts Association, Cercle Mouve (renamed the Taiwan Fine Arts Association later), and Era Art Society respectively. Since his retirement in 1973, he never questioned a thing concerning the art circle, refusing any social life. He shut his door to paint. Concentrating on research and learning, he explored questions concerning painting everyday to solved new problems.

Wang Wei-kwang believed that in Chen's latter works, he put more emphasis on the expression of color, to elevate its concealment effect and create a psychic response with the simplicity of the nuances. With symbolic methods, he approached closer and closer to expressionist and symbolist styles. The painter had already mentioned his fondness of French painting in his early stage; but later he discovered it to be inadequate. As locating updated information became easier, he had more frequent contact with new styles; he began to show his affinity to Expressionism.

Undergoing the disaster of the "eight seven flood" in 1959 and the fire in 1975, Chen's documents and paintings encountered severe loss. During his hermitic life from 1974 to 1984, the year he passed away, it was the most mature period of Chen's creative life, although the quantity he produced was rather small. With his sacrifice and insistence, each painting is a masterpiece. After the 1960s, he tried to paint a series of portrayal on the same motif, to study color, form, and spatial relations. Even more, he showed his sensibility in his paintings, such as Self Portrait, Still Objects, Sanchung, Street Scenes, Seaside at Yeh-liu, Guanyin Mountain, Tamsui landscapes, etc.

In this auction, The Scenery of Tamsui was Chen Te-Wang's work in 1980. According to Taiwan Fine Arts Series 15: Chen Te Wang, this picture was a sketch done near St. Benedict's Church, Hu-To Mountain. From the flowerpot on the right of the picture, it indicates that the painter is looking down from the balcony to the foot of the mountain. In the painting, sky, houses, etc, can be vaguely seen. Chen Te-wang never painted abstract painting because he believed that his attitude towards nature was a kind of emotion, with which he concretized the picture. Once he mentioned, "Pursuing nature to the tiniest bit, it must be something abstract. Abstraction emerges from it." "My paintings now show to have some symbolic touches gradually, not belonging to realism, nor naturalism." He was exploring the innermost part of his heart; likewise, his paintings were symbolic as well as impressionistic.

Influenced by the French painter Pierre Bonnard in employment concerning the enlightenment of color, he studied very hard on the complicated changes of color. He said that in Bonnard's studio, there were always some scraps and pieces of clothes of many colors. For cotton yarn, there were white, blue, yellow, etc, but they were not made of a single color. Those clothes stitched with many colors gave a splendorous effect. In "The Scenery of Tamsui", the landscape is as tiny as colored silk filaments, patching bits and bits into patches of color glory. In Taiwan Fine Arts Series 15: Chen Te Wang, concerning The Scenery of Tamsui, there was the following comment, "The colors stacked in a tight and neat manner, with grand brushstrokes. The changes in color are subtle and minute but in clear strokes. It can be regarded as 'blending with clarity'. The bushes on the left are never devoid of light blue brushstrokes, to represent the bushes and houses, blending into the dim atmosphere. Meanwhile, bright brushstrokes permeate the entire picture, rendering an ever-flowing leisurely rhythm." (Wang Wei-kwang , p. 263).

From this splendid landscape picture, we can see the painter endeavors in his use of color. Every stack of shades and tone connects to wonder. As French painter Georges Braque always said that don't just say that I only use two or three colors in my picture, which is done with dedications. So did Chen Te-wang. He contributed the research of his lifetime to form colors and present them on canvas. Those interlocking colors require years of experience to express it in such a clear and profound manner.

In 2001, the Council for Cultural Affaires, Executive Yuan entrusted the Artist Co. Ltd to publish a set of books titled Portraying Taiwan: The Beauty, introducing the humanistic and natural landscape through the eyes of painters. The Scenery of Tamsui is collected in the book, to acclaim the beauty of Tamsui landscape presented with the painter's brushstroke.

Reference:

Wang Wei-kwang. Taiwan Fine Arts Series 15: Chen Te Wang. First Edition. Taipei: Artist Co. Ltd, 1995

Portraying Taiwan: The Beauty. Supervised by Council for Cultural Affaires, Executive Yuan. Taipei: Artist Co. Ltd, 2001