The rhythm of painting is related to the rhythm of life. Therefore it is essential to live and think truthfully if you want to paint truthfully.

--Lee Tze-fan

Among the many forerunners of modern Taiwanese painting, Lee Tze-fan was one of the few who did not have a notable educational background. Unlike most of his peers, he never went abroad to study painting, nor did he grow up in an environment which could offer him material support as he endeavored to develop his talent. He was even somewhat compelled to stick with watercolor painting because it was less expensive. Nevertheless, he painted incessantly for more than sixty years and garnered a large number of prizes over his artistic career. Because of his continuous efforts and achievements, he was recognized in 1983 by the Council for Cultural Affairs of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan as one of the ten most important forerunners of modern Taiwanese painting.

What Lee prided himself on the most, however, was not being a painter, but a teacher. He started to teach at the age of twenty and continued to do so until his health prevented him from going on. "I have more students than Confucius," he once said proudly. Lee was famous for being an excellent teacher. Many renowned painters in Taiwan studied under his tutelage, and every one of them spoke highly of him.

Lee spent his lifetime painting and teaching. There were no great ups and downs in his life. Unlike some painters who confront the extremes of joy and pain and transform them into art, Lee's simple lifestyle rendered a serene, peaceful quality to his paintings. "Some artists live in a self-centered world," said his fifth son, Prof. Lee Yuan-peng. "Their personal struggle and uncontainable passion gave rise to many immortal works. But my father did not belong to this group of artists. He had reached a balance between reality and dream. Therefore, he could be a responsible father and an enthusiastic teacher as well as an excellent watercolor painter." In the following pages we will look into the artist's life--which though uneventful was nonetheless fulfilled--his art, and his life-long efforts to promote Taiwan's art education.

As a young man

Lee was born to the owner of a grocery store in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, in the summer of 1907. Because his father, Lee Shu-hsin, was the only breadwinner in his large family, they had to live on a tight budget. Lee recalled that for ten years during his childhood, he never received a single piece of candy.

Although Lee's father had a hard time supporting his large family, he still thought it necessary to provide his children with a good education. Therefore, young Lee entered elementary school at the age of five and continued his schooling all the way through college.

It seems hard to piece together the details of Lee's childhood. When a journalist once asked him what his childhood was like, he only answered with a sonorous laugh. "My life has been as ordinary as can be. Nothing uncommon ever happened in my life. I never worked in the rice fields, nor did I have to graze cattle. There is no story to tell."

Nevertheless, Lee did remember that he made his first attempt at watercolor painting when he was a fifth grader. His first impression of watercolor painting was that it was "free." "Water gave me a feeling of immense freedom." His works attracted the attention of his teacher, who thought that they should be sent to art competitions. But painting did not mean much to Lee at that time, as he failed to find it very interesting.

After Lee graduated from primary school, he heeded his father's wishes by attending the Second Normal College in Taipei and studying to be a teacher. At that college, students who were gifted in painting often garnered prizes at important art exhibitions. When Lee was a sophomore, the school invited the Japanese painter Ishikawa Kinichiro, who had studied art in the West, to teach the students. (At that time, when Taiwan was still under Japanese rule, teachers were often brought in from Japan to reinforce the government's cultural assimilation program.) "Kinichiro was a very good teacher," Lee recalled. "He made painting enjoyable for us. I especially liked it when he used his own works as examples to show us how to paint. One particular painting in which he depicted the scenery near our school deeply touched me. I looked at the vapor spiraling up from the flowing water in that picture and, for the first time in my life, felt an irrepressible urge to paint."

Lee immediately joined the painting club organized by the senior students in his school. Every weekend he went out with a party of teachers and students to paint scenes from nature. He had originally wanted to become an athlete because he excelled at sports, but from then on painting engaged most of his time and attention. At college, he made the acquaintance of many young painters-to-be, such as Lan Yin-ting (who would be named one of the ten greatest watercolor painters in the world), Chen Cheng-po and Lee Mei-shu, all of whom later became leading figures in Taiwanese art circles. Along with other painters of their generation, they helped to create a specifically Taiwan-oriented art form.

After he graduated from college, Lee wanted to go to Japan to pursue further studies in art. But as much as he desired that, he knew that his family was not rich enough to afford his dream. Besides, his older brother was already studying in Japan, which was a great financial burden for the family. Therefore he decided to stay in his hometown and teach at a local school to help support his family. Every month he would set aside a large portion of his salary and send it to his brother in Japan.

In order to improve his painting skills, he maintained a regular correspondence with Ishikawa Kinichiro even after the teacher had returned to Japan. He sometimes sent his paintings to the teacher and asked for his opinions. Lee also met regularly with other painters to exchange views on each other's works. But most of the time he just painted on his own.

Two years after Lee became a teacher, he began to submit his works to major painting competitions. Paintings such as A Summer Afternoon (1928), Sunset (1929) and Chingshui Street (1930) all won prizes. But Lee was far from being the type who liked to seek fame and fortune. According to his friends, although he enthusiastically took part in art exhibitions and competitions, it was mainly because he wanted to learn from them and compare his skills with other painters whose works were also on display. He always tried to keep himself out of the spotlight.

As a teacher

Lee fully enjoyed his job as a teacher. He often said that he preferred to be regarded as an art teacher than a professional painter. In his opinion, it is easier to qualify as a painter. One only has to be good at painting to be a painter. But in addition to being skillful in painting, a painting teacher needs to know how to inspire his students' interest in the arts. It involves the teaching of the painting techniques as well as effective communication with the students. To Lee, being a teacher is a much more fulfilling job than being a painter.

Whenever Lee taught a class, he paid attention to every detail. He fixed broken chairs and easels, and he decorated classrooms to make sure that the students had a nice environment to work in. He reviewed and revised their paintings with care and guided the students in detecting their weaknesses. An encouraging teacher, he never failed to see anything worthy of praise in his students' works, no matter how poorly executed they were.

He taught students to "observe things closely, make the best of inspiration, experiment boldly, and try out every possible method of expression." Under his systematic guidance, the students found it easier to derive pleasure from painting and naturally developed a fondness for it. Lee's efforts paid off well--his students won prizes at many extramural painting competitions. Noticing that their teacher was spending so much time and effort on them, the students sometimes said, "Sir, you work so hard, yet you earn so little money in return--it's so unfair." "It's not unfair at all," he would reply. "When teaching you, I also learn a lot from you."

Lee taught at many schools over his teaching career. When he first went to teach at Taiwan Normal University, some students ignored him or were inattentive at his lectures because they scorned his lack of a prestigious education. But his serious attitude and inspiring teaching methods soon won their hearts. Before long those students changed their defiant attitude and became eager learners.

Even after his students had graduated, they still often visited Lee's home. Sometimes they took orchids, fruits or vegetables along with them as presents. They also often took their paintings for their beloved teacher to assess.

"Mr. Lee taught with invariable gusto for fifty years," commented the famed local poet-painter Hsi Mu-jen, one of Lee's former students. "The students he taught in the last year of his career loved him as much as those he taught in the first year. We all admired him and were emotionally attached to him. It is not easy for a teacher to be able to achieve that."

As a father

At the age of twenty-four, Lee married Tsai Pei. They had eight children together, four of whom have doctorate degrees. His second son, Lee Yuan-che, even won a Nobel Prize for his outstanding achievement in chemistry. Lee's family was a great spiritual support to him. Though bringing up eight children was a great burden, his competent wife took good care of them, without ever giving him any cause to worry. When people praised him for having raised such good children, he always said, "It is all my wife's doing."

Even so, he still had a great influence on his children. "Dad was a great father whose love for us knew no bounds," his daughter Chi-mei reminisced. "What he said or did often served as good examples for us to follow. There was an episode which I remember especially clearly. One day when I was in elementary school, I heard our neighbors quarrelling. My brother and I ran out of our house to see what was happening. Dad immediately called us back and said in a serious tone, 'Don't waste your eyes on ugly things--eyes should be used to appreciate the beauty of life.' What he said that day has been embedded in my memory ever since."

Yuan-che said that he never saw anyone work harder than his father. "People marvel at my father's talent for painting. But as his children, we know that his talent came from his incessant efforts to learn and try new things."

Ever in pursuit of perfection, Lee never allowed himself to carry out a task in a perfunctory manner. When a painting was finished, he would see to it that it was properly framed. Even after it had been sent to a purchaser's home, he would sometimes go to that person's house to see if it had been hung in an appropriate place. His demand for perfection encouraged his children to always do their best in their different fields of study or work.

As a painter

Lee painted in watercolor, partly because it cost less, partly because it was easy to carry around and therefore enabled him to work more frequently out of doors in front of his subject. Sketches made in the open air were often developed in detail later in his studio. Such immediate contact with nature gave the artist an extra psychological insight into the mood and atmosphere of a place, which he was then able to convey through his work. His landscape paintings often depicted scenery in northwest Taiwan, where his hometown was. He found inspiration in the beauty of the rural countryside in Hsinchu, Chutung and Miaoli, areas rarely painted by other artists.

In addition to landscapes, Lee was a master at portraying figures. His Portrait of A Woman (1931), Sandalwood Fan (1947) and Young Lady (1954) were all award-winning works. Later in his career, however, he painted fewer portraits because it was not easy to find models to draw. As for his still lifes, connoisseurs and collectors especially favored his paintings of roses. It was one of these paintings that moved the world-renowned painter Huan Chun-pi to invite Lee to teach at the Department of Fine Arts of Taiwan Normal University.

Lee always prided himself on having never wasted a single piece of paper. Once he set a brush to canvas, he would never give up. Even if a picture turned out to be unsatisfactory, he would continue to modify it until it was a good work of art. While an oil painter can freely change and improve his paintings with his dense oil paints, a watercolorist does not have such a luxury. But Lee invented a "wash, paint and overlap" technique to cope with this problem. When he was dissatisfied with a part of a painting he was working on, he would wipe that area away with a wet rag or brush. When he found that a larger area of a painting failed to reach the desired effect, he would carefully wash the entire area with tap water and then repaint over it after it had dried. "I thought it a pity to throw away half-finished paintings just because they were not satisfactorily executed," the painter once explained to a friend. "So I came up with the idea of washing the paper. The result was quite satisfying, so I kept doing it this way." After repainting, the washed paper gives a feeling of density and depth, qualities rarely found in watercolor paintings. This unexpected effect makes Lee's paintings unique in the circle of Taiwan's watercolor paintings.

A life well lived

Lee died in 1989 at the age of eighty-three. Apart from teaching and painting, he seldom associated with people. As a result, many people in Taiwan only know him as the father of Lee Yuan-che, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, instead of a painter. But what was important to him was not attaining fame, but living a life which he could look back on without regret. Maybe his son-in-law says it best: "He never asked for anything in his life, but what he attained was beyond the reach of many people--contentment, self-esteem and a sense of fulfillment."