Let us travel back to the Chiayi of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1926, Chiayi-born oil painter Chen Cheng-po (1895–1947) received the rare honor of exhibiting at the Japanese Imperial Art Exhibition. In 1927 another Chiayi artist, Lin Yushan (1907–2004), had two paintings selected for the inaugural Taiwan Art Exhibition: Water Buffalo and Southern Gate. Lin went on to win a prize at the fourth Taiwan Art Exhibition in 1930 with his work Lotus Pond. The following decade or so saw numerous painters who were active in Chiayi’s art circles selected for the Taiwan Art Exhibition and the Taiwan Viceroy Art Exhibition, including Lin Dongling (1905–2004), Lu Yunsheng (1913–1968), Huang Shuiwen (1914–2010), and Zhang-Li Dehe (1893–1972). Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo—Taiwan’s most widely circulated newspaper in the Japanese colonial period—dubbed Chiayi a “town of painters.”

Born in Chiayi in 1917, Huang Ou-po was brought up in the rich cultural landscape of this southwestern Taiwanese town, where art and literature flourished.

Huang was skilled in painting en plein air. He derived his techniques from observing and feeling nature.

The making of a painter

Huang was born into a family of intellectuals. He became familiar with Classical Chinese prose and poetry at a tender age and learned parallelistic verses in Taiwanese from his mother. This early exposure to the rhythms and cadences of traditional poetry gave Huang a firm literary grounding.

Owing its prosperity to Alishan’s timber industry, Chiayi also enjoyed a cultural efflorescence, boasting an array of poetry groups. Local gentry made a point of inviting artists and writers to their homes to discuss culture. Hu­xian Orchard, for example, was created and hosted by the influential poet Lai Yuruo (1878–1941). This idyllic place functioned like a free school, offering self-cultivation classes that focused on Chinese classics, and artists were welcome to come and paint en plein air. Lin Po-ting, son of painter Lin Yushan and former deputy director of the National Palace Museum, tells us that in the Japanese era Chiayi’s poets and painters were in close contact with each other. He says that ink-wash painting—traditionally espoused by Chinese literati—wasn’t the only art form they practiced; they were also skilled in plein air painting and nihonga (Japanese-style painting using polychrome Asian gouache). It was at Huxian Orchard that Huang Ou-po, then aged 17 or 18, first met Lin Yushan, Huang Shuiwen, Lu Yunsheng, and others. The cornucopia of poetry and painting here, coupled with the achievements of the Chiayi artists, encouraged Huang to find his métier in art. Following in Lin Yushan’s footsteps, he traveled to Tokyo and enrolled at Kawabata Art School.

Huang Ou-po (front row, second left) was in close contact with other senior painters like Chen Chin (front row, center) and Lin Yushan (front row, fourth right). They often exhibited their works and hosted art groups together. (courtesy of Lai Tian-yun)

Huang sketching outdoors with his wife and daughter in the 1960s.

Huang’s Fragrance of the South, which was selected for the Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition, zooms in on the crowns of areca palms, evoking the scent of areca flowers.

Representing everyday life

After completing his studies, Huang remained in Tokyo and worked as a graphic designer for a magazine. He was subsequently enlisted by the Japanese government to serve as a translator in China. Living abroad in that turbulent age helped sharpen Huang’s eyes and broaden his horizons.

Lin Po-ting draws our attention to Huang’s Fragrance of the South, which was selected for the Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition in 1948. Huang’s subject matter here—areca (betel nut) palms—is familiar enough; what makes the painting special is that it gives prominence to the often-neglected areca flowers. It conjures the fragrance that is said to permeate the mountains when areca palms bloom. Zooming in on the high crowns of the palms, Huang allows the tiny flowers, which are usually out of reach, to occupy the foreground. The palm fronds and fence that adorn the background serve to bring into focus the white blossoms, as if these were myriad bright stars. The painter thus “creates an aromatic atmosphere, a poetic scene,” Lin says.

Professor Huang Tung-fu of the Department of Visual Arts at National Pingtung University published a new biography of Huang Ou-po in 2023. He says that Huang’s works demonstrate a spirit of tolerance by blending together nihonga, Chinese ink-wash painting, and Western art, assimilating these various traditions into his own artistic vision. “His feelings were inspired directly by nature, and it was from there that he distilled his techniques.” Huang’s style of ink wash may not be as flamboyant as that of other celebrated painters, but his honest approach to nature makes his paintings eminently accessible.

Huang’s Family Celebration, which won the Education Association Prize at the Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition in 1953, portrays red tortoise cakes (ang ku kueh). With a red skin made from glutinous rice flour and a sweet filling, these oval-shaped delicacies are common ritual offerings in Taiwan during traditional festivities. In the painting, an elderly woman seated on a bamboo stool is cutting a banana leaf on which rests a red tortoise cake. On the bamboo tray in front of her are undyed glutinous rice dough, red food coloring, and a cake mold. Next to her are a wooden pail containing adzuki bean paste, and a tub across which lies an uncut banana leaf. In an economical manner, the painting encapsulates the entire process of making red tortoise cakes and exudes a distinctively Taiwanese charm.

Huang’s son Chen-chih, curator of Chan Liu Art Museum, further illuminates the details in his father’s painting. The woman depicted here, he tells us, is actually his maternal grandmother, who lived in an age when the practice of footbinding was prevalent. The painting faithfully represents her deformed little feet, as well as the embroidered slippers next to her, the patterns and wrinkles on her clothes, and her hair bun ornament. Rendered with loving attention, these meticulously captured details express the spirit of the age.

Lin Yushan (upper photo, right) and Huang Ou-po (upper photo, left) were distant relatives and friends for life. Lin’s son Po-ting (lower photo, right) and Huang’s son Chen-chih (lower photo, left) are also good friends. (upper photo courtesy of Lai Tian-yun; lower photo by Kent Chuang)

As well as being a painter, Huang Ou-po was a poet and playwright. He wrote a comedy in Taiwanese. (photo by Kent Chuang)

The artist as intellectual

Always cheerful and outgoing, Huang Ou-po was not only a painter, poet, teacher, and playwright but a social commentator as well. Huang Tung-fu notes that many of his works contain elements of social criticism, reflecting his sense of duty as an intellectual. The painter wove multi­farious strands of thought into his art.

Huang’s Underground Bank, which won a prize at the Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition in 1949, is a case in point. The woman in the painting, again with bound feet, is selling stacks of joss paper at a stall. An essential part of Taiwanese folk beliefs, joss paper is a type of spirit money burned as offerings to the deceased in the underworld. Huang painted the scene as a metaphor for the financial chaos and rampant inflation of his time, when “underground” loan-sharking was rife.

In addition to these tongue-in-cheek allusions, Huang’s paintings, Lin Po-ting tells us, sometimes resemble theatrical scenes. This is how Lin interprets Huang’s Dutiful Men of 1956. That year Thelma, a rare April typhoon, grazed Southern Taiwan and inflicted substantial damage. Near his home, Huang saw telecommunications workers climbing a utility pole to carry out emergency repairs. Moved by their professionalism, he sketched the scene there and then. His finished painting adopts an upward-looking perspective; the sky has cleared after the typhoon, but there are still powerful gusts of wind. Lin says that the billowing tarpaulin in the painting looks like a curtain in a theater, being lifted to reveal the men laboring away at their repair work on the “stage” of their work site. Huang, says Lin, “achieves a sense of movement in this painting.”

Standing in front of his father’s Welcoming the Bride, Huang Tung-fu tells us this is a vivid representation of a type of wedding procession that was common in Taiwan. The men in the painting are carrying traditional litters, together with the bride’s dowry. At the head of the procession is a plain palanquin for the matchmaker. Behind, the ornate litter with a phoenix on its roof is for the bride. Huang Tung-fu says this work is evidently under­pinned by the painter’s careful research; the scene reminds him of a Taiwanese song he used to hear as a child, about a girl from a mountain village traveling to her wedding.

Huang’s paintings sometimes employ tongue-in-cheek ploys. His Underground Bank shows a woman selling joss paper but is actually a satire on rampant loan-sharking.

Huang’s Welcoming the Bride depicts a traditional wedding procession of a kind that used to be common in Taiwan.

The survival of Taiwanese nihonga

After World War II, the Republic of China took over Taiwan from Japan. Nihonga, which carried a strong Japanese flavor, was embroiled in a debate over whether it could be legitimately categorized under Chinese—or “national”—painting, and nihonga painters in Taiwan found their creative freedom curtailed by the ideology that the government embraced. For a while, they were even cold-­shouldered by the selectors at the Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition. Never afraid to speak his mind, Huang Ou-po wrote to the organizers several times, detailing the unfair treatment imposed on nihonga painters and advocating for their inclusion. In 1972, when the Taiwan Provincial Art Exhibition canceled the nihonga category (“National Painting II”), Taiwanese nihonga suffered a terrible blow. It was then that renowned nihonga painters, including Lin Yushan, Chen Chin (1907–1998), Chen Huei-kuhn (1907–2011), Lin Chih-chu (1917–2008), Huang Ou-po, Hsu Shen-chou (1918–2005), and Tsai Cao-ju (1919–2007), established the Chanliu Art Society, with Huang serving as executive secretary. They held annual exhibitions of members’ works, ensuring the survival of Taiwanese nihonga.

Huang was assiduous in supporting emerging artists. Among his students were Liu Geng-gu (1940–2006) and Wang Ru-tung (1934–1963), both of them important painters who inherited nihonga traditions. Of all Huang’s students, Lai Tian-yun (b. 1948) spent the longest time with him, from age 17 till Huang passed away in 2003. Lai remembers Huang with fondness and gratitude: “Rather than showing off his techniques in his paintings, he focused on their intellectual content.” Huang not only taught his students to paint but also recited poetry and studied Chinese classics with them. Enriching the mind, Huang believed, helped enrich one’s artistic ­vision.

When Huang cofounded the Taiwan Greenwater Gouache Painting Society with Lin Yushan, Chen Chin, and others, Lai took on the role of executive secretary. He compares his generation of Taiwanese nihonga painters to umbilical cords absorbing the nutrients bequeathed by older artists like Huang. Lai and his fellow painters seek to perpetuate their predecessors’ legacies. Today, Greenwater announces an open call for exhibition entries every year, encouraging the creation of new paintings and celebrating the achievements of the older generations by naming prizes after senior nihonga painters, such as Huang and Lin Yushan. In recent years, Greenwater has also promoted nihonga by holding displays and workshops at local schools.

Huang Ou-po’s passing marked the end of an era, and we may never fully recover the splendors of his times. Nevertheless, his paintings continue to open for us a window on Taiwan in all its colorful exuberance.

Born in Chiayi, Huang recorded Alishan’s timber industry through painting. His Wooden Horse in the Air depicts a laborer strenuously pulling a tree trunk.

In Huang’s Dutiful Men, the postures and expressions of the workers, together with the tarpaulin being lifted by the wind, are full of energy, like a scene from a drama.

Huang Ou-po (right) was Lai Tian-yun’s (left) teacher. They remained friends for nearly 40 years. Grateful to Huang, Lai vows to pass down his passion for nihonga and poetry. (courtesy of Lai Tian-yun)