Portrait of Fu Zengxiang

Fu Zengxiang (1872–1949). Courtesy name (given in adulthood): Yuansu. Additional pseudonyms: Owner of Shuangjianlou, The Hermit of Cangyuan, The Old Man of Cangyuan. Fu was a famous book collector.Fu served as Education Minister for the Beiyang government from December 1917 up until the reformist May 4th Movement in 1919.When Fu was minister, Xu Beihong visited him with some of his works, armed with a recommendation from Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University.

Fu Zengxiang fought for funding for Xu to spend time in France, and he was one of the first Chinese artists to leave the country to study art.Xu returned to China in 1927, and visited Fu whenever he was in Beijing.This work is a portrait that Xu painted at Fu's house in February 1935, when he had returned from Europe after hosting an international exhibition of modern Chinese art. He produced several other portrait sketches around the same time.