Portrait of Chen Sanyuan

Hundred Days Reform, who wrote Notes on the Current Situation of Officialdom. 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.”
Xu Beihong was close with much of Chen Sanli’s family. Chen Sanli’s oldest son Chen Shizeng was Xu’s close friend. He carved the “Xu Beihong of Jiangnan” seal, given to Xu as a gift at his goodbye party before Xu went to France in 1919. His third son Chen Yinke was a close friend in Berlin, while Xu Beihong and Jiang Biwei were studying in Europe. Chen’s fifth son Chen Dengke also studied abroad in France, meeting Xu and his wife in Paris. They were all members of the Heavenly Dog Society.