Yang Ling-fu (, December 16, 1889 – September 4, 1978) was a Chinese artist.

Early life and education

Yang was born in

Wuxi Wuxi ( zh, s=无锡, p=Wúxī, ) is a city in southern Jiangsu, China. As of the 2024 census, it had a population of 7,495,000. The city lies in the southern Yangtze delta and borders Lake Tai. Notable landmarks include Lihu Park, the Mt. Lings ...

, Jiangsu, the daughter of Yang Zhongji, a government official and diplomat. Her older brother, , was a poet, editor, government official, and industrialist. Yang won a scholarship to study art in Philadelphia in 1924; she returned to Philadelphia in 1926, in connection with the Philadelphia Exposition of 1926. She also studied and taught in Peking. As a young artist she won medals from presidents

Yuan Shikai Yuan Shikai (; 16 September 18596 June 1916) was a Chinese general and statesman who served as the second provisional president and the first official president of the Republic of China, head of the Beiyang government from 1912 to 1916 and ...

and

Xu Shichang Xu Shichang (Hsu Shih-chang; ; courtesy name: Juren (Chu-jen; 菊人); October 20, 1855 – June 5, 1939) was a Chinese politician who served as the President of the Republic of China, in Beijing, from 10 October 1918 to 2 June 1922. The only p ...

Career

Yang was commissioned to make life-sized portraits of Manchu emperors and empresses for the Palace Museum of Mukden in the 1920s. She worked as a curator and was president of the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts. She also wrote novels, poetry, and a book on Chinese cookery. Yang moved to the United States before

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. In 1936, she presented an exhibit of Chinese art at the Canadian Jubilee Exposition in

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

. She lectured and exhibited her watercolor paintings in California. She taught language, art, and cooking classes in various settings, including at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and the

Defense Language Institute The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other f ...

at the Presidio in Monterey. She created a set of handmade dolls to illustrate her lectures on Chinese art, and sometimes demonstrated

finger painting Fingerpaint is a kind of paint intended to be applied with the fingers; it typically comes in tubes and is used by small children, though it has occasionally been used by adults either to teach art to children, or for their own use. Finger pa ...

played a flute, or wore Chinese gowns at her lecture appearances. She also made fundraising appeals for Chinese war relief and refugees. As a poet, she was associated with Poets of the Pacific, a multi-ethnic, multi-national group with an anti-modernist literary emphasis.

Personal life

Yang wrote a memoir, ''Sketch of Players,'' in the 1970s, including her oft-told anecdote about sending a pacifist poem to

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

. She died in

Carmel, California Carmel-by-the-Sea (), commonly known simply as Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, located on the Central Coast of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 3,220, down from 3,722 a ...

, in 1978.

References

External links

A letter from Ling-fu Yang to Eleanor Roosevelt
seeking help with immigration matters; in the FDR Library collection at

Marist College Marist University is a private university in Poughkeepsie (town), New York, Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Marist was founded by the Marist Brothers, a Catholic Church, Catholic religious institute, in 1905 to prepare brothers for their ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Yang, Ling-fu 1889 births 1978 deaths 20th-century Chinese women artists Chinese women poets 20th-century Chinese women educators 20th-century Chinese educators People from Wuxi