PAN YU LIN or PAN YULIANG - 潘玉良 (pinyin: Pān Yùliáng) (1895-1977) Still life with fruit, 1939 Oil on cardboard. Signed and dated in Chinese upper right Yu Liang - 玉良 - 39. Signed on the back, top right, in Chinese in black ink: 潘玉良 巴黎 (Pān Yù Liáng Bālí) - Pan Yu Liang Paris. Other inscriptions, more or less legible, appear on the back: in partly faded red "Par...", then "Paris 1939", below "still life", then "Yu Liang - 玉良" in Chinese. Finally, at bottom right, the handwritten inscription in black: "Paris 1943, Renite?". This inscription could indicate an exhibition date, as Pan Yuliang exhibited four works at the Salon National des Beaux-Arts that year, including a still life (no. 4024), or the name of an owner of the work. 50 x 60.5 cm The title of an article by Dominique Jarrassé reads: "Une artiste de l'Ouest en Chine et une artiste chinoise en France" ("A Western artist in China and a Chinese artist in France"). This sums up the symbolic significance of this artist who has created a bridge between the two cultures. After an impoverished childhood, Pan Yu-Lin was admitted to the Shanghai Art Academy in 1920, came to France the following year to attend the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, and became the first Chinese artist to exhibit at the Italian National Exhibition in Rome in 1925. She returned to Shanghai in 1928, where she held her first solo exhibition, a first for a woman painter in China. Pan Yu Lin returned to France in the summer of 1937 and enrolled in Lucien Simon's class at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She settled on rue Vercingétorix in the Montparnasse district, not far from the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Her studio was immortalized in the 1950 film "Chez ceux de Montparnasse", where we see the artist in the middle of her set, surrounded by the objects she depicts in her still lifes. Welcomed into the informal, cosmopolitan group of artists known today as the École de Paris, she remained there for almost 40 years, until 1977, when she died at the age of 82. She is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery, surrounded by intellectuals and artists. She took part in numerous exhibitions and won prizes at the Salon des Artistes Français, Salon d'Automne, Salon National des Beaux-arts, Salon des Indépendants, Art Libre, and was awarded a Médaille d'or de la ville de Paris in 1959. Shortly after his death, in accordance with his wishes, his family asked the Chinese government to repatriate his works to China. These works arrived in Hefei, in the province of Anhui, and the family donated a large part of this collection of thousands of engravings and 361 oil paintings to the Anhui Museum. In 2013, the museum authorized the Li-Ching Foundation to put the archives online and showcase the works. His rich and tumultuous life has been the subject of novels and films, as well as numerous academic studies, symposia and exhibitions. His works will be featured at the Musée Cernuschi from October 2022 to February 2023 in the exhibition "L'encre en mouvement, une histoire de la peinture chinoise au XXe siècle".