Visiting Kwan Ho Ki

Tseng Yu prepares to move to Rome

Before moving on from Paris to Rome, Tseng Yu came to London and we visited our good friend - a former Hong Kong University student - Kwan HoKi and his wife. I was now working for The Marconi Company and had just acquired this 1932 Sunbeam Talbot sports car. We are seen here in Hyde Park - but who on earth took this photo?

Peasant Spinning - by Tseng Yu

This nostalgic picture of a peasant working at the spinning wheel was painted in London for the Arthur Jeffress exhibition,1955. Then Tseng Yu, perfectionist as always, was dissatisfied with the composition, turned the canvas over, and completed a second painting – Fishing – which went into the exhibition.

The Blogger Blushes

Tseng Yu's Paris bedsit
This unfinished study of a corner of Tseng Yu's room in Paris comes with deep blushes from the blogger: not about this blog but about the gaffe in the blog below! My Paris Room was NOT sold at the one-man exhibition – only the oil painting ! Worse follows in previous blogs: none of them are about MY Paris bedsit or MY landlady; I was quoting from the letters of Tseng Yu, as of course you, dear sensible reader, would possibly have realised.

My Paris room 1956

Watercolour sketch
"This a the preliminary watercolour sketch for the oil painting of my Paris room which was sold at the Paris one-man exhibition."

Letter from Paris 1956

My Paris bedsit
"I am writing from 4th floor up in centre of Paris. The buses and camions and scooters are buzzing below me. The room has two windows just situated on the corner of a building. I have magnificent view of the crossing streets and the roofs of Paris. Looking down from my window I feel like a god watching human activities from heaven. What an odd world."

My landlady

"My landlady looks like a bird perched on top of a plateau, and dry up there. She is too old to walk down the wheeling stairs and every morning asks people to bring vegetables and bread for her. The flat consists of pigeon rooms. Next door is a musician, and next is a German girl. It is embarrassing, the partition is so thin one can hear everything that happens in your neighbours."

A strange article

"The room also provides a strange article, my landlady said I could wash my bottom there. No hot water. I have a pump paraffin cooker. It boils water quickly."

Bursary at The Slade

Playbill -The Miser

During his student years in Hong Kong Tseng Yu continued almost obsessively to produce drawings and sketches but it was not until 1951 that one piece of work drew public attention. This was the decorative playbill he designed for the University Arts Association production of Moliere¹s The Miser. The press, public officials and local business people were in the audience and came to chat with him. Tseng Yu subsequently sold pen and ink drawings to local newspapers and was offered a bursary by the British Council to study at The Slade School of Fine Art in London.

Thus in spring 1952 I was writing to ask my parents (who ran a laundry in Kent) to sponsor his studies in Britain and provide guarantees for his visa. By that summer his passage was booked and he was enrolled for the autumn term at The Slade, armed with estimates by my parents of the cost of living in London plus warm invitations to their home in Sandgate.

Wishing Tseng Yu a Happy Arrival in England

Hong Kong, 1st October, 1952

Dear Tseng Yu,

The weather is fine and the autumn beautiful. Hong Kong this evening has a splendid moon and a million lanterns. Also FIVE illuminated stars. They haven't yet exercised their fascination over Yung Yu. He came up alone to see me last night. Neither of us learnt much but it was very entertaining. My Mandarin is at least more comical than his English!

I am writing to thank you for your grave-gay letter from Singapore and to wish you a happy beginning in that land of shop-keepers and poets. Did it rain the day you arrived? You must get an English mac, a Burberry.

Mary

Paris Exhibition: Trafalgar Square

Gouache, watercolour, pen & ink on paper.

Paris exhibition: Bois de Boulogne 2

Tseng Yu's Paris Exhibition included a number of tree studies, and also still lifes and drawings completed in London.

Tseng Yu's One-Man Exhibition, Paris 1956

At the end of 1955, Tseng Yu moved to Paris where he enrolled as a student at the Beaux-Arts and began intensive study of French language. His reading, always wide, now had a more Continental European edge, taking in Sartre, Camus, Brecht, Heidegger, Nietzsche as well as an immense range of books on Renaissance and modern European art.

He was captivated by tales from Greek mythology and he wrote "What am I doing now? I am painting trees all the days. Do you know the story of Daphne and Apollo? Daphne tried to avoid Apollo¹s chase and got her father to turn her into a tree. So Apollo finds himself embracing a laurel tree which still quivers in fear as, underneath the bark, a heart beats fitfully. So you see
my trees are not environmental, they are conveying an experience of feeling, they communicate the instinctive existence of objects."

This painting of the Bois de Boulogne was shown in Tseng Yu's first one-man exhibition in Paris, 1956.

Arthur Jeffress Gallery

Tseng Yu's One-man Exhibition was held at the Arthur Jeffress Gallery, 28 Davies Street, Mayfair, London, from 6th September to 1st October, 1955. Among the 14 oil paintings, etchings and watercolours was this self-portrait.

Tseng Yu's One-man Exhibition

The cover to Tseng Yu's Exhibition Catalogue.

The Tower through Chinese eyes

Images of the Tower of London, both sinister and comical, are combined in this etching.

Tower Bridge

Tseng Yu's London etchings

During Tseng Yu¹s three years at The Slade, he produced a number of marvellously idiosyncratic drawings and etchings of London. At first, fascinated by intricacies of neo-Gothic, he produced studies of Parliament, and Tower Bridge. These were followed by more daring abstracts, such as the etching of Beefeaters and ravens at The Tower.