Yen Shui-long

Yen made a series of mosaic art works after 1961. And he also created many art works that contain some motifs about Taiwanese aborigines. In 1984, Yen resigned from Shih Chien College of Home Economics (now Shih Chien University). In his old age, Yen worked mainly on painting, drawing, other visual arts and his personal exhibitions. He worked long hours to prepare for a 1997 retrospective meant to celebrate his 95th birthday. While working, he slipped and fell in a bathroom, resulting in a bone fracture that required surgery. Yen died of surgical complications before work for the planned exhibition was completed.

Over the course of his life, he taught at Taiwan Provincial Tainan Junior College of Technology (台南工業專門學校; today’s National Cheng Kung University), National Taiwan Academy of Arts (today’s National Taiwan University of Arts), Private Tainan School of Home Economics, and Shih Chien School of Home Economics (today’s Shih Chien University). In addition, he also wrote the book Taiwan’s Arts and Crafts (1952).

Yen Shui-long also worked in advertisement design. Between 1933 and 1940, he painted commercial advertisements for Osaka Smoca Tooth Powder Company. These works were later collected in a series that became a classic exemplar of Japanese advertising design in the 1930s.

Between 1933 and 1944, he returned to Japan, worked on advertising design and applied arts. Yen resided in Taiwan again later, and became a teacher of Tainan Technical College (now National Cheng Kung University).

However, he became afflicted with hepatitis as a result of overwork and poor nutrition. In order to recover, he returned to Taiwan in October 1932. In 1934, he and other artists, such as Tan Ting-pho, founded the Tai-Yang Art Society (臺陽美術協會). Starting in 1936, Yen devoted himself to the promotion of arts and crafts. In 1941, he and other artists, including Zhang Wanchuan (張萬傳) and Chen Dewang (陳德旺), founded the Taiwan Plastic Arts Society (台灣造形美術協會). He also devoted himself to the pursuit of art and craft skills, such as straw basket weaving and bamboo-processing work.

By introduction, he studied under Kees van Dongen at the Académie d’Art Moderne. While studying in France, he applied for permission from the Louvre to copy famous works by artists such as Titian and Ingres, and his work was selected into the Salon d’Automne in 1931.

By the he was thirteen, both of Yen's parents, as well as his grandmother, had died. His older sister had married, so Yen had to take care of himself. After completing two years of training at the Tainan Teachers’ Training School (台南州教員養成所) in 1918, Yen was hired as the youngest schoolteacher at the public elementary school in present-day Xiaying District. A fellow teacher convinced Yen to pursue art in Japan, and he subsequently enrolled in the Kaei Public School (Kaei Kōgakkō). He went to Japan in 1920, and was admitted into the Western Painting Division of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts two years later. By 1927, he entered graduate school at the same institute to study under Fujishima Takeji, Okada Saburousuke, and Wada Eisaku. He returned to Taiwan in 1929 and held a solo exhibition to raise funds for further studies in Paris. Yen's further education in art was partly funded by Lin Hsien-tang.

Yen Shui-long (Chinese: 顏水龍; pinyin: Yán Shuǐlóng; 5 June 1903 – 24 September 1997) was a Taiwanese painter and sculptor, was born in Ensuikō Chō, Japanese Taiwan (modern-day Xiaying, Tainan, Taiwan).