The Poet Chen Sanyuan

This was the portrait that Xu Beihong liked best. Chen Sanli (1853-1937), courtesy name Boyan and pen name Sanyuan, was from Yining, Jiangxi. He spent his later years in Beiping. He was a key figure in the Tongguang School, and he was considered China’s last traditional poet. During the Japanese occupation of Beiping, he died of starvation. This painting hung in Chen’s living room. His father, Chen Baozhen, was an important figure in the Hundred Days Reform. Chen Sanli’s sons, Chen Yinke and Chen Hengke (Chen Shizeng), were a historian and a painter respectively. Chen Sanli, Tan Sitong, Ding Huikang, and Wu Baochu were collectively called the Four Sons of the Hundred Days Reform, but after the Hundred Days Reform, Chen seldom involved himself in politics, calling himself “an unconcerned observer.”