Preface

In 2023, the descendants of the prominent Japanese colonial era watercolor artist Ni Chiang-Huai (1894-1943) united to gather up Ni’s paintings, as well as his collection of artworks and books, together with his drawings, sketchbooks and personal journals, giving them all to Taipei Fine Arts Museum. This batch of nearly 500 paintings and documents had long been scattered among Ni’s heirs, and they brought them together again for the sake of this donation. For TFAM, the bestowment of this “Time Capsule” is unique in the museum’s 40-year history, in both its scope and quality. Based on our sense of mission to preserve, research and exhibit Taiwanese art, TFAM immediately initiated the process of restoring the paintings and researching the artist’s papers and files contained in this unprecedented gift. “Virtue and Beauty: A Tribute to Ni Chiang-Huai” presents the results of this research at the current stage.

This exhibition also constitutes TFAM’s second retrospective of the artist, following “A Journey into Formosan Landscapes: The Works of Ni Chiang-Huai” in 1996. However, in contrast to the past, the strategy for executing this exhibition is based on broad-ranging interpretation of archival documents. In particular, Ni Chiang-Huai’s journals have allowed us to more clearly delineate the contours of his life, and this has undoubtedly opened up new narrative possibilities for tracing his creative evolution. At the same time, his brief yet deeply meaningful journal entries provide a much broader view and frame of reference for exploring his artistic ideas and thought process.

For example, the journals offer previously overlooked clues about the Baofeng Art Museum that Ni dreamed of founding, allowing us all to more keenly appreciate the grandness and scope of his vision of art. One could even say that Ni’s concepts for the Baofeng Art Museum afford the key information needed to clearly understand the internal relationships between the paintings and books he painstakingly collected in his “Time Capsule” (including over 60 works by artists like Ishikawa Kinichiro and hundreds of art books). Ni’s plans for the spatial arrangement of the galleries tell us that, even in an era when art institutions had not yet been fully developed, he intended to build a museum centered on the development of Taiwanese art, highlighting its path of development from its inception with Ishikawa to further elaborations by the first generation of Taiwanese painters.

Thanks to this “Time Capsule,” we are able to re-assess Ni Chiang-Huai’s artistic journey and his uniquely groundbreaking role in Taiwanese culture. Thus, I wish to express my special gratitude to the members of Ni Chiang-Huai’s family. I also extend my sincerest thanks to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the Keelung City Culture and Tourism Bureau, the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, and private collectors, all of whom have lent us precious items from their collections. We are also particularly grateful to the Museum Friends Association and the Hui Neng Chi Arts and Culture Foundation for sponsoring the preservation and restoration of the artworks, an outstanding contribution to the conservation of these important assets of Taiwanese art history.

 

Loh Li-Chen
Director of Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Preface
Introduction

｜Plates
　Early Works
　Coal Towns & Mining Communities
　Harbor Town: Keelung
　Portraits & Nudes
　Taihoku City
　Excursions
　A Gaze at the Everyday

｜Baofeng Art Museum
　Taiwanese Painters (CHEN Chih-Chi / LEE Mei-Shu / RAN In-Ting (RAN Intei) / HUNG Jui-Lin)
　ISHIKAWA Kinichiro
　Japanese Painters (OSHITA Tojiro / MANO Kitaro / TAKAHASHI Seiichi / KOGA Harue)
　Library

｜Appendices
　Timeline of Ni Chiang-Huai / Group Exhibitions / Historical Documents / Archives

Acknowledgements
Exhibition Team
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