Painter’s life is devoted to Dunhuang caves

To mark the dedication of the father and daughter to Dunhuang, a second joint exhibition, Everlasting Beauty of Dunhuang, is running at the Tsinghua University Art Museum through Sept 15. It explores how Dunhuang's treasure trove of history, art and culture altered the Chang family's destiny and continues to influence Chang Shana's work today.

The exhibition shows several oil paintings. They are copies of original works by Chang Shuhong which are now on a permanent display at the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in his hometown Hangzhou.

The paintings tell of Chang Shuhong's time in Paris, where he attended the prestigious art school Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts. His work earned him acclaim at the Paris Salon and helped to forge his reputation as an important artist.

But all this was soon to change, after he read Paul Pelliot's Catalog of Dunhuang Caves, and saw at the Guimet Museum a display of artworks plundered from Dunhuang by Western explorers. This not only ignited his lifelong interest in Dunhuang, but also honed his desire to protect it for posterity.

Amid wars and social chaos, Chang Shuhong and his team arrived in Dunhuang and started to clean up and bolster the ill-protected relic site. "My father never felt that he had sacrificed a promising future as an artist for his hard job at Dunhuang," Chang Shana, now 88, says.