INK LOTUS

Zhang Daqian first visited the Japanese inn Kairaku-en, where Japanese artists liked to congregate, in 1931. After he left China in 1949, he frequently traveled to Japan and regularly stayed at this inn near the Yokohama shore. There the owner allowed Zhang to paint on a large table in the formal hall. After hearing that a developer had demolished the nearby beach in the early 1970s, Zhang Daqian ceased his visits. (See Shen CY Fu, Challenging the Past: The Paintings of Chang Dai-chien, Washington DC, 1991, pp. 299, 302, 311.)