Lee Tze-fan Memorial Art Gallery Audio Guide

Lee Tze-Fan Memorial Art Gallery: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Lee Tze-Fan Memorial Art Gallery

   Welcome to the Lee Tze-Fan Memorial Art Gallery, known in Chinese as 李澤藩美術館. You are on Linsen Road in Hsinchu, one of the most historic and busiest streets in the city, running in front of the railway station. Traffic hums outside, and inside you step into a quieter world of watercolor. This is a private museum devoted mainly to the paintings of Lee Tze-Fan, one of Hsinchu's best-loved artists. What makes it special is that it grew out of his own family home. The building was converted from his former residence, so you are not visiting a distant institution. You are visiting the place where a painter, a teacher and a father lived and worked. Over the next few minutes, we will meet the man himself, look at the way he painted, and follow some of the stories hidden in his pictures of Hsinchu's rivers, lakes and fishing harbor. Take your time, because the best way to enjoy a watercolor is slowly.

2. 02

   Lee Tze-Fan Memorial Art Gallery: A Home Becomes a Museum

   The museum opened on the sixth of August, 1994, on the site of Lee Tze-Fan's old home. Its family created the Lee Tze-Fan Art Education Foundation to run it. Here is a detail you will not find in many museums: it follows a principle often summed up as no selling of paintings and no fundraising. The foundation has long relied on donations from the artist's family and students, and it has put its energy into studying, cataloguing and digitizing his work. The museum shows his paintings, but it also shows the life around them. Among the displays are his diaries and letters, along with the brushes, paints and objects he used during his lifetime. One of its great attractions is the studio, presented as it was when he worked there. Standing in that space, you can imagine the long hours behind every finished sheet of paper. His son, Lee Yuan-tseh, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986, once said his family never saw their father idle. He described a talent built through years of learning, studying and exploring, and that sense of steady dedication seems to fill the rooms.

3. 03

   Lee Tze-Fan Memorial Art Gallery: The Life of a Hsinchu Painter

   Lee Tze-Fan was born in Hsinchu on the fifth of June, 1907, and he lived and painted in the city for the rest of his life. At Taipei Normal School he studied watercolor under Ishikawa Kinichiro, and after graduating he returned home to teach at Hsinchu First Public School. In 1933, together with He Delai, he founded the Hsinchu Art Research Society, and in 1938 he became a teacher at Hsinchu Normal School. In 1946, the year after the Republic of China took over administration of Taiwan, he filled the post left by a Japanese teacher at Hsinchu Normal School. He also taught part-time at other schools, including the national art college. He retired from Hsinchu Normal School in 1965 and kept teaching there part-time until 1976. In 1971 he became the first president of the Hsinchu Art Association. Recognition grew over time. In 1983, he was chosen as one of 10 senior Taiwanese painters whose work would be recorded for history. He died at home on the tenth of July, 1989, at the age of 82. His watercolors had come back into fashion in the 1970s, when Taiwanese art turned toward local, realist subjects.

4. 04

   Lee Tze-Fan Memorial Art Gallery: Rivers, Lakes and a Painting That Breaks Hearts

   Lee Tze-Fan stayed with watercolor all his life, partly because it made painting outdoors easy. His favorite subjects were the landscapes of Hsinchu and Miaoli. Look for his favorite composition: a high viewpoint looking toward mountains, with a plain or valley in the middle and a river winding through it. He also painted historic sights and the people of the region. He was famously thrifty, and that led to a signature technique. Rather than throw away a spoiled sheet, he washed it under water to remove the failed parts, and discovered a distinctive wash method. His daughter Li Jimei, the museum's director, says he practically held the painting under the tap and washed it clean before starting again. The result can be seen in Dusk at Qingcao Lake, painted in 1950. Qingcao Lake is about 4 kilometers from the city center, and he often took students there to sketch. Then there is the most moving story. On the twenty-second of March, 1960, a overloaded ferry carrying children across the Qianxi River toward Nanliao Elementary School capsized. Lee painted the tragedy in a work called Heartbreak. He used dark, soft patches of color for the children's panic, and bright, fine white dots and lines for splashing water that cut across the picture. Some exhibitions have also gathered his scenes of eastern Hsinchu's waterways and the moonlit Nanliao fishing harbor.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you leave the Lee Tze-Fan Memorial Art Gallery, pause for a moment on Linsen Road. The street you step onto is the very one that his paintings quietly stand apart from. The same city appears in his work as rivers, hillsides, harbor light and old city gates. Some of his paintings show landmarks you can look for in Hsinchu, such as the East Gate, which he painted in 1979 on a sheet measuring 40 by 55 centimeters. Others invite you to wander farther, toward the mountains to the east, the lake at Qingcao, or the coast at Nanliao. When you next see a Hsinchu view, try to read it his way. Where would he stand, what would be in the middle distance, and where would the river run? The city might look a little different afterward.