Jin Zhang

Jin Zhang (1884–1939) was a painter, calligrapher, and art instructor active during China's Republican era. Her name is occasionally listed as Jin Taotao (金陶陶),, her art name, though Jin Zhang is how she is most commonly known in the historical record.

Biography Jin Zhang was born in 1884 in the town of Nanxun in China to a prominent silk merchant family. Her grandfather founded a successful silk business that her father, Jin Dao, was able to expand internationally. His openness to foreign ideas led to his children growing up alongside popular Western inventions like microscopy, phonography, and the camera. One of her younger brothers, Jin Shaoji, co-founded the Peking Laboratory of Natural History in 1925 with American Amadeus William Grabau.

Education As they came from what was considered a wealthy family, Jin Zhang and her siblings were privately tutored throughout their childhoods in subjects like calligraphy, painting, and the Confucian classics. Due to the wide range of education she received, Jin Zhang was fluent in both English and French in addition to her native Chinese. Inspired by his parents, Shixiang would eventually become a well known researcher and art collector. In 1999, he authored a 116-page book on his mother's life and artistic career titled Jin Zhang: The Joy of Goldfish.

Death Jin Zhang died suddenly in 1939, at the age of 54.

Even though the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was intended to only prevent the immigration and travel of Chinese laborers and intentionally excluded students and travelers from restrictions, individual immigration officials were ultimately given the power to decide who did and did not enter the United States. The officials in Boston not only initially denied the Jin siblings entry, but they also deliberately humiliated them much to the anger of their friends and fellow passengers. Jin Zhang was singled out for ridicule by officials who blamed the attention on her, for "wearing her native costume." The siblings were eventually permitted to enter the country once they each sat for three official photographs and paid a US$500 bond, the 2020 equivalent of more than US$58,000.

Media Jin Zhang and her brothers soon joined a growing number of Chinese individuals mobilizing against the United States' Chinese Exclusion Act. They used the press to their advantage, giving dozens of interviews to both English and Chinese newspapers. The siblings did not disagree entirely with the original legislation, and instead used their position as elites to separate themselves from laborers. This sentiment was echoed in many of their interviews, for example:

The incident was reported on by English newspapers published across the United States like the Boston Herald, the Lowell Sun, The Sun (New York City), the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Daily Tribune, the Indiana Evening Gazette, and The Washington Post. The latter of which included a plea by the article's author to end the mistreatment of Chinese individuals, declaring "We are not, as a nation, so lost to all sense of decency that we do not feel ashamed when Chinese gentlemen are gratuitously insulted by out immigration officials." In China, the incident was shared on posters, postcards, and pamphlets, including one titled Tonga shounue ji (A Record of Abuses Suffered by Our Compatriots). Many Chinese newspapers also reported on what happened to Jin Zhang and her brothers, including Shen bao and The North-China Herald. Additionally, she became a highly respected art instructor while working with several of Beijing's art societies. Her fans often featured hand drawn calligraphy alongside delicate, colorful paintings of flowers, fish, birds, and insects. Her illustrations became progressively more detailed and intricate as she continued to paint fans for several more decades.

Jin Zhang began painting on silk soon after she started painting on paper hand fans. For four decades, she painted dozens of large hanging scrolls with botanical scenes, landscapes, underwater illustrations, and flying birds. Many of her paintings were accompanied by her hand drawn calligraphy of calendars or popular songs and poems. She was especially noted for her traditional bird-and-flower paintings, known as huaniaohua.

Publications As did many of her contemporaries, Jin Zhang arranged for several of her painting to grace the covers of magazines and publications. Her work was most commonly featured on the covers of women's magazines and of publications from organizations she was involved with, like the Chinese Painting Research Society and the Lake Society. One of her bird-and-flower paintings was featured on the cover of volume 2, issue 8 of The Ladies' Journal, published in August 1916. The CPRS was eventually endorsed by then President Xu Shichang, so the group held significant influence in Beijing's art world. Exposition Internationale de Liege, Belgium, 1930. As of 2022, her most expensive artwork to appear at auction was an untitled hand fan that sold in Hong Kong for the equivalent of more than US$40,000 in 2010. Her work is also held in the collections of museums and public institutions all over the world, including the following: Goldfish and Lotus, ink and color on paper, c. 1920, Palace Museum, Beijing, China. Kingfisher and Lotus, ink and color on silk, c. 1920, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, United States. Haoliang zhileji, painting manual, 1922, The Spencer Art Reference Library at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, United States. 金章: 金魚百影 (Jin Zhang: The Joy of Goldfish), illustrated biography, 1999, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Washington, D.C., United States.