Hung Liu and My Grandfather
Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China in 1948, the Year of the Rat. She immigrated to the United States in 1984 and died in August 2021. That statement says very little about an amazing person and life. However, the purpose of this essay is not to serve as a biography of Hung Liu. That is left to skilled biographers. Rather, this short essay is an attempt by me to express how moved I was by “Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands”, an exhibition of her work that I viewed, along with Kathy and Brian, at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC in November of 2021. If you bear with me and read to the end, you will understand the title of this essay.
Hung Liu painted a self-portrait during each Year of the Rat. This is her final Year of the Rat self-portrait, painted in 2020:
Rat Year 2020 II: The Last Dandelion
Hung Liu 1948-2021
Hung Liu’s husband, art writer Jeff Kelly, wrote of this portrait:
“In this, her final self-portrait before her death in August 2021, Hung Liu depicted herself wearing a mask, a common face covering in the age of Covid. Look carefully, however, and you will see that the “mask” is nearly unpainted linen beneath the picture itself. Vulnerability – the lack of any real covering – is implied.
Meanwhile, the adjacent rusty bronze panel shows a dandelion, one of Liu’s favorite subjects, plucked down to its final seed (or pappus). Countless other pappi have drifted away in the winds of life. It is unlikely the artist knew she was ill when painting this work, but she did know her strength was declining. Thus, the phrase “last dandelion” suggests an underlying awareness of the end. Still, to look at those bright and living eyes, like orbs in a deep endless night, is to remember that Hung Liu lived her dramatic, epical life as a painter, which remains alive, and whose last dandelion will never drift away.”
Mission Girls
Commentary by exhibition curator, Dorothy Moss:
"Protestant missionaries flooded China during the nineteenth century and established several new schools for Chinese youth who were living in poverty. Hung Liu, who often advocated for children, was perusing a book by W. A. P. Martin entitled "The Awakening of China" (1907), when a photograph of orphaned “mission girls” caught her eye. The subjects were identified as students at the Girl’s School of the American Episcopal Mission in Wuchang (the old district of modern Wuhan). The range of their expressions moved Liu to respond with this series of portraits."
"The idiosyncratic drips, layered textures, and specific brushstrokes in Mission Girls underscore the individuality of each real-life subject. The circles, Liu said, are “light and airy…and full of hope.” For her, the round marks - usually painted in a single stroke - signified wholeness and transience. The art writer Jeff Kelley, Liu’s husband, views them as “riding on the surface of her paintings, reminding us of tattoos or thought bubbles.”"
Mission Girls photograph from Martin's "The Awakening of China" (1907)
Hung Liu's Mission Girl portraits
All: Oil on canvas, 2002-3
Castellano-Wood Family Collection
Now I come to one of many reasons that I was so touched by this exhibition. My Grandfather, the Rev. Henry Clinton Collins, MD, was a missionary to China of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America for seven years during the mid-1890s. He served primarily at the mission in Ichang (now Yichang), China.
My grandfather with his "children"
From my reading of my grandfather's writings, I believe that he was an advocate for these and other disadvantaged children in his sphere of influence.
In the conclusion to "a lecture on China delivered before the Baptist Missionary Society of Charlottesville at their Annual Service" in 1905, my grandfather wrote, and I transcribe and quote as accurately as possible:
"The remedy – The Chinese are a sociable people. The teahouse is their place of gossip, and first of all we must meet them in their way instead of violating their ideas of customs and religion. We must not scorn them & theirs but seek their point of view and mollify not anger them. To this end we want:
I. To send sensible enlightened men as our teachers & preachers, and they should be heart gentlemen for that people readily sign up men and to get their respect and so ear men must be gentlemen.
II. Paul’s methods should be impressed upon these men. They must not imagine that is necessary to convert in a day. Gradually my friends gradually! The Gospel leavens not spoils. Let us aim to convert not upset them.
The method of the anti footbinding society by education is the best, enlightenment not antagonism. Gods {sic} way is to change the heart and the bad customs will die out.
It is not necessary for ladies to stalk around the streets like vile women. Unmarried people should not be sent in the interior, and gad about in open shamelessness as they see it.
III. Doctors & missionaries should have no secret enclosures. Mystery hangs around enclosures. Orphanages & hospitals should be open for visitors always. We must correct the errors by these measures.
IV. Our methods should be to associate with them intimately, make them our guests, go freely to their homes. Doctors should visit the homes, not have them brought to them. Work through social ways and thus you break down prejudice and win their esteem at same time. You win their hearts and so their souls and thus win them upside down imperceptibly."
I wonder what Hung Liu would have seen in the faces of my grandfather's "children", and then painted.
DMC - November 2021