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Guan Zilan 關紫蘭
(1903-1985)

Famed for her beauty as well as her talent, Guan Zilan’s photographs graced the covers and pages of many magazines and newspapers throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s. These images were often the product of portrait photographers, in particular the Wou Kong Photography Studio (Hujiang Sheying Lou滬江攝影樓), which supplied publicity shots for most Shanghai movie stars and socialites of the day. A high-profile socialite herself, Guan came from a Shanghai family enriched by the booming modern textile trade. Her family’s wealth afforded her a college education at the newly opened Chinese University of the Arts (Zhonghua Yishu Daxue 中華藝術大學), where she studied under Chen Baoyi 陳抱一 (1893–1945), Hong Ye 洪野 (1886–1932), and Ding Yanyong 丁衍鏞 (1902–1978). After graduating with honors in 1927, she was encouraged by her teachers to study abroad in Japan, first with Kametaka Fumiko, president of the Sekiso-sha Girls’ School for Painting in Kobe, and later at the Tokyo Academy of Culture (Nihon Tōkyō Bunka Gaku-in). In addition to holding a solo exhibition shortly after her arrival in Japan, Guan also exhibited in several prestigious exhibitions, including the Nikakai Art Exhibition, the Ueno Fine Art Exhibition, and the Hyogo Prefectural Art Exhibition in Kobe.

In 1938, at the age of thirty-five, Guan Zilan resettled in Shanghai and started a family. Though she continued to paint, and held at least one exhibition in 1941, she never again attained the level of fame she had experienced at the beginning of her career. In the early 1960s, Guan participated in assorted painting associations, including the Shanghaishi Wenshi Yanjiuguan, the Zhongguo Meishujia Xiehui, and the Shanghai Meishujia Xiehui. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, however, she secreted her artworks away and gave up painting entirely.