Sui Wesley Chan, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Sui Wesley Chan, also known as Wesley S. Chan, was born on September 15, 1897 in Canton, China according to his World War II draft card. His naturalization application had the birth year 1898 and his immigration name, Soy Jung Chan. A 1937 passenger list said his birthplace was Toishan, China.

Chan immigrated to Canada in 1915 based on the date recorded in the 1930 United States census. He resided in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In August 1921 Chan crossed the border for the purpose of studying at the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The register included his birthplace, Tong Lee, Sun Ning (an earlier version of Toishan), China and mother’s name and location.

The Chicago Daily News, November 27, 1929, said

Artist Society Shows Cream of Local Work
Almost but not quite snowed under by football celebrations and such distractions of metropolitan hotel life the Chicago Society of Artists is carrying on in a third floor corridor of the Stevens hotel. ...

...the Chicago society’s exhibition contains with few exceptions the cream in painting of the independent wing of our artists.

There is ... Sui Wesley Chan, the young Chinese who is the latest product of the Art institute’s graduate school, ...

The Hyde Park Herald (Chicago, Illinois), December 6, 1929, said

Sui Wesley Chan, whose studios are in the Arcade building, 36th and Ellis, is one of Hyde Park’s artists to have a picture hung in the exhibition of the Chicago Society of Artists at the Stevens hotel.

The Hyde Park Herald, December 13, 1929, said

North Hyde Park is peculiarly favored in it many distinguished artists. ... Sui Wesley Chan, well-known Chinese artist, lives in the Douglas Arcade at 36th ands Cottage Grove. These are representative of the large number of well known painters who have found North Hyde Park a pleasant place in which to live and dream and work.

The Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1930, reported events at the Art Institute.

An exhibition of paintings and lithographs by Sui Wesley Chan, a native Chinese who graduated from the Chicago Art institute and who is a member of the Chicago Society of Artists, is on view in the Kroch gallery.

The 1930 census counted Chan (line 14), his wife, Florence, and daughter, Susian. The date and place of Chan’s marriage is not known. The family lived in Chicago at 3560 Ellis Avenue. Chan was a self-employed artist.

Publishers Weekly, August 30, 1930, said

The galleries of A. Kroch’s International Book Store at 206 North Michigan Ave., have been showing an exhibit of the art of Sui Wesley Chan, including water colors, oils and lithographs.

The Chicago Daily News, September 10, 1930, said

“Over the Lagoon, Lincoln Park”—A Lithograph by Sui Wesley Chan, Young Chinese Student Now Working in Chicago.

Sui Wesley Chan, the young Chinese artist who graduated at the institute school recently, had his first one-man show at Kroch’s this summer. There is a nice paint quality in the work of this painter, if he has so far stuck rather closely to the styles of his different teachers. Already he has tried his hand at a wide variety of subjects—[portraits, the figure, landscape, and city life. He handles both water color and lithography with a true feeling for these media. His lithograph of the lagoon in Lincoln park, on this page, is one the new items for Chicago fans which will be kept in the portfolios at Kroch’s.

The Chicago Daily News, November 11, 1930, said

The Chicago Art Guild, Sister Stanisia’s idealistic plan to bring the work of Chicago artists before the residents of Longwood, opened its second exhibition last Sunday at the Academy of Our Lady, Throop and 95th streets. ...

The collection now hanging at the academy, which is to remain for the winter, is a cosmopolitan and up-to-date one, including the work of such as Helen West Heller, Sui Wesley Chan, Frances Foy, Edouard Chassaing, Macena Barton, Camille Andrene, Emil Armin, Eugenie Glaman, Ralph Clarkson, Thomas Hall, Carl Hallsthammar, Irving Manoir, Tunis Ponsen, Eva Watson Schutze, Karl Wagner and Louis Weiner.

The Art News, December 13, 1930, reported the international exhibition of lithographs and woodcuts at the Art Institute of Chicago and said

... Several Chicago artists are represented: Theodore J. Roszak, J. Brozik, William S. Schwartz, Davenport Griffen, I. Iver Rose, Sui Wesley Chan, and Helen West Heller. ...

The Chicago Daily News, December 17, 1930, said

...at the [Art] institute’s international print exhibition there are works by about a dozen Chicago woodcut artists and lithographers who made the show, among them Sui Wesley Chan, Jean Crawford Adams, Charles Wilimovsky, Frederick Larson, Catherine O’Brien, Towell Scott, Davenport Griffen and Theodore Roszak.

Chan’s art was exhibited at the Art Institute from 1929 to 1931.

The Chicago Daily Tribune, March 20, 1931, published an article about chop suey and its origin.

When next you eat chop suey, remember you are eating an American dish, whether it is prepared by American or Chinese chefs, and that the food you are eating, according to the Chinese interpretation of the words chop suey is “many things in small pieces.”

Four Chicago Chinese leaned back from a dinner table one evening this week and by combining answers in English with considerable discussion among themselves in Chinese, answered some of the questions that interest the average American.

Wesley Chan, an artist, first settled the meaning of the words chop suey by explaining that chop means “many things” and that suey means “in small pieces.” It is not a Chinese dish but an American dish composed of typical Chinese foods. ...

The Chicago Daily News, April 22, 1931, said

Features Gone But City Offers Plenty of Art
Town Full of Exhibits That Fail to Replace Exciting Shows

With such exciting art shows as the Carnegie International and the Guelph treasure no over, the gallery fan looks in vain this week for anything to take their place. And the town is full of exhibitions, too. ... The Midland Club has a dignified, if not very thrilling display by the Chicago Society of Artists. Perhaps Sui Wesley Chan’s picture of the red Wabash avenue bridge, Macena Barton’s modern Simonetta leaning on her red polka-dotted window sill and Charles Mullin’s new delight of suburban life may be the exceptions, ...

The Chicago Daily News, October 8, 1931, said

Mrs. Kelly Heads Art Exhibit to Open Sunday
Mrs. Haven Core Kelly, of 7701 Yates avenue, is chairman for the third annual exhibit sponsored by the Fine Arts Guild of Chicago, to open Sunday at the Longwood Academy galleries, 95th and Throop streets. Among exhibitors will be Sister M. Stanisia, Sui Wesley Chan, Tunis Ponsen, Anna Lynch, Wellington Reynolds, Maud I. G. Oliver, Leon Hermann, Thomas O’Shaughnessy, Harold Leroy, Martin Hennings, Gerald Frank, Oscar Gross, Marshall Smith, Joseph Berrien, G. Armando Michell, Livia Macrini and Ralph Clarkson.

By 1933 Chan moved to New York City.

In 1933 Chan illustrated Isaac Taylor Headland’s book, Chinese Rhymes for Children: With a Few from India, Japan and Korea. The book was mentioned in Reformed Church Messenger, Women and Missions, and The Chinese Recorder.

A review appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), November 11, 1933, which said

... Sui Wesley Chan did the illustration, and Sui Wesley is particularly terrible. It is too bad she [sic] forgot her own charming Chinese background and went frankly—and stuffily—Occidental in her pen-and-inks. ...

The New York Evening Journal, November 22, 1933, said

Morris Eisenman to Get Portrait
Morris Eisenman, president of the Metropolitan News Co., tonight will receive a portrait of himself, executed by Sui Wesley Chen [sic], at a gathering of artists and writers at 122 W. 13th st. The artists commissioned Chen to do the portrait in recognition of Eisenman’s philanthropy in art.

The Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1934, printed Chan’s artwork.

Chan, his daughter and four-year-old New York-born son, Du Can, traveled to China. They stayed at Park Sha, Toyshan, China where Chan’s father-in-law, Mah Wing Sang, lived. On November 26, 1937 the family was aboard the ship Empress of Japan when it departed Hong Kong. The trio arrived at Vancouver, Canada on December 15. They transferred to the ship Princess Kathleen which took them to Seattle, Washington. On the passenger Chan named his friend, Mrs. W.C. Moy, who lived in Brooklyn at 1707 East 52nd Street. Chan’s Chinese Exclusion Act case file number was 27730/3-1 and ticket number 7032/3070.

The New York Times, December 8, 1938, said

The Chinese Art Club Elects
The Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street, announced yesterday that it has elected its founder, Chu Jor, as the new president for the coming year. K. L. Eng was elected vice president and Wesley S. Chan treasurer. It also announced that its annual Chinese children’s show, which will be held in February, will not be confined to New York City, but will be national in scope.

Chinese Digest, January 1939, said

New Officers for N.Y. Chinese Art Club
New York—The Chinese Art Club here at its fourth annual meeting elected Chu Jor for its next president, succeeding Moowee Tiam. Others elected included K.L. Eng, Wesley S. Chan, Marquis Chunn, Arthur Lee, and Stanley H. Chin.

The club is now preparing for its next annual Children’s Art exhibition. This year it intends to have a nation-wide representation and Chinese children’s art work from the Chinese communities of San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and other Chinatowns.

The Nassau Daily Review-Star (Freeport, New York), October 11, 1939, said

Dinner Marks Birth of Chinese Republic
Hong Host to Freeport Group at Affair in Commemoration of Its Founding

The village of Freeport today has an oil painting showing a section of Sunrise highway in the western part of the village. The painting was presented to the village by Edward L. Hong at a dinner commemorating the 28th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese republic held in Savoy inn, Merrick road, last night.

Mr. Hong, who operates the restaurant, was host to a group of village officials and leading business and professional men at the dinner. Mayor Robert E. Patterson accepted the painting on behalf of the village.

The painting is by Wesley Chan of Freeport, and shows a portion of Sunrise highway near the municipal lighting plant. It is titled, “The Heart of the Sunrise Trail.”

Clinton J. Egan acted as toast-master at the dinner, which also marked the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Savoy inn at Freeport.

The Nassau Daily Review-Star, December 5, 1939, covered the Nassau County Art League’s annual exhibition. Chan was an exhibitor.

Chan’s one-man show was covered in the Nassau Daily Review-Star, January 15, 1940.

Chop suey isn’t the only attraction at Eddie Hong’s Savoy Inn on West Merrick road, Freeport, these days. Eddie is sponsoring an exhibit of 14 paintings by his fellow countryman and friend, Sui Wesley Chan, in the dragon room of the inn. The exhibit will continue through the remainder of the month. Above, left to right, Dr. Nathaniel Cooper, Mrs. J. B. Barnes, Eddie and Chan look at the largest painting on display, a formal portrait of Chester A. Fulton, Freeport business man and civic leader.

Chinese Artist Shows Work in Solo Show at Freeport

Sui Wesley Chan Exhibits 14 Canvases in Dragon Room of Savoy Inn

“Rosh job, rosh job,” said little Sui Wesley Chan, deprecatingly. But for all his real and unaffected modesty, honest pride showed through the oriental, poker-face composure of the Chinese artist as people streamed in to view the exhibition of his latest paintings in the dragon room of the Savoy inn on West Merrick road, Freeport, operated by his fellow countryman, friend and patron, Edward L. Hong.

Studio in China Destroyed

The phrase, “latest paintings,” was used advisedly above, for Wesley is mourning the loss of most of his works, among them several pieces that he considered his best. They were destroyed when the Japanese invaders blew up his studio in Canton, China. Wesley just managed to escape ahead of them.

The exhibit consists of 11 oils and three water colors, most of them local subjects, including formal portraits of Chester A. and Mrs. Fulton and Mrs. S. G. Myers, widely known Freeport residents, as well as a still life and a study of Chinatown in lower Manhattan.

Wesley painted them all since coming to Freeport to live with the Hong family at 164 Southside avenue during the past year. Like most artists, he would have liked to have devoted more time to their execution, but the promptings of his energetic friend, Eddie Hong, kept him at his easel many times during the summer when he would much rather have been playing tennis on the Schuman courts in Baldwin. He’s as handy with a racket as with a brush, incidentally.

Subjects to Get Portraits

After the exhibit, Wesley and Eddie Hong will present the portraits to their subjects, a study of its clubhouse to the South Shore Yacht club and a study of the municipal electric power house called “The Heart of the Sunrise Trail,” to the Village of Freeport. The other works will be for sale to art lovers.

A native of Canton, China and the only artist in his family, Wesley is a graduate of the Art institute of Chicago, where he won a scholarship for excellence in painting. He is a member of the Chicago society of artists and the Art league of Nassau county. His works have been exhibited in the American institute of paintings and sculpture and at the art institute of Chicago, at Cedar Rapids, Ia.; Beloit college, Beloit, Wis.; the Art association at Ann Arbor, Mich.; Garden City and at New York city.

When he returned to his native land several years ago, the Canton government school of art appointed him head of the western art department with headquarters in that city. But the Japs blasted his pictures, his plans and his hopes and he is now in Freeport, supporting himself by commercial art work and creating his more serious compositions in his spare time.

A quiet, studious little man in his forties, Wesley is the perfect foil for his dynamic, thoroughly Americanized friend and patron, Eddie Hong. The exhibit is Eddie’s idea and he is carrying it through with the thoroughness that characterizes his many civic activities.

The Savoy Inn was featured in Chan’s 1939 painting.

In the 1940 census Chan (line 53) and his family lived in Manhattan at 22 Spring Street. He was a freelance artist who earned 600 dollars in 1939.

On February 15, 1942 Chan signed his World War II draft card. His home address was the same. He was described as five feet four inches, 143 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair.

An image of Chan’s 1943 painting is at Bonhams.

In 1948 Chan and his wife became naturalized citizens; Florence on January 5 and Chan on November 15. He changed his name from Chan Soy Jung to Sui Wesley Chan.

The 1950 census said Chan (line 20), his wife and daughter lived at 22 Spring Street in Manhattan. The whereabouts of his son is not known. 

Chan passed away on December 24, 1961 in Manhattan, New York City. His wife, Florence, passed away on December 21, 1993 in Exton, Pennsylvania. Chan’s daughter, Susian, passed away on September 18, 1999. His son, Du Can, passed away on March 2, 2016.


Related Posts
Artist Chu H. Jor and the Chinese Art Club

Chu Jor in the American Artists Congress 2nd Annual Exhibition
Chu H. Jor, Moo-Wee Tiam, Don Gook Wu and C. W. Young at ACA Gallery, September 1937
Searching for Moowee Tiam, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club
Searching for C.W. Young, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club
K. L. Eng, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Howard Low, Artist and Illustrator

 

 

(Next post on Wednesday: Solidarity)

Searching for C.W. Young, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

C.W. Young was also known as Chu W. Young and may have, at times, dropped his middle initial.

An artist named Chu Young was profiled in the newspaper, Daily Argus (Mount Vernon, New York), August 30, 1938. According to the profile Young was 34 years old and born in Canton, China. His friend and fellow artist, Wu Tan-Ku, age 32, was also profiled. There is the possibility that Wu Tan-Ku was the artist known as Don Gook Wu.

The article was reprinted in the Herald Statesman (Yonkers New York), September 7, 1938. The caption reads:

Chu Young (left) and Wu Tan-Ku are shown as they set to work on their latest paintings of Westchester scenes. Residents of Mount Vernon for the past seven years, the Oriental artists sell their work for a living and send a good part of the proceeds to their countrymen in war-torn China.

 

The earliest mention of Young was in the New York Post, October 24, 1936.

Chinese Art Club Holds Canal Street Exhibit

Those who cherish the racial interpretation of art will find some matter to ponder in the exhibit by members of the Chinese Art Club in their new quarters at 175 Canal Street. For nine-tenths of the work shown is indistinguishable from contemporary occidental art.

Howard Low is most alert to advanced modern trends, creating abstract designs, lively drawings of city life, and intimate paintings like “Goldfish Bowl,” all very well done. Chu W. Young is an able exponent of impressionist landscape art, and Chu H. Jor paints still life with a soft patine of color. Others showing are Mowee Tiam, Harry Wong, Stanley Chin, Tschai Lanzene, K. L. Eng, Bennie Sonn and S. V. Pang.

The Daily Worker (New York, New York), September 18, 1937, said

Dismissed WPA Chinese and Japanese Artists Express Unity in Paintings at ACA Gallery
The New York art season is getting under way. Galleries in the Champagne Belt are brushing the summer’s cobwebs from the ceiling corners and oiling the door hinges. Collectors, professional and amateur, have returned to the city. The critics have returned from their summer wanderings prepared, as far as adjectives are concerned, for whatever may befall them.

One gallery has kept the torch bright during the past months, spreading both heat and light. The A. C. A. Gallery, 52 West 8th Street, has been staunch in its support of the pink slip artists of The Federal Art Project, having given them three consecutive shows.

The current one is of great importance. Chinese and Japanese artists are exhibiting together, symbolizing their common persecution as aliens without the right to apply for citizenship in a more oblique way, but in a sharper manner, they represent the unity of the Chinese and the Japanese people against the Japanese war-machine.

Dismissed from Art Field

However, it is on the basis of their work as artists that this group presents its case. Victims of the most reprehensible type of legislative discrimination on WPA, they are in serious danger of being wiped out of the art field.

In his prefatory statement, Harry Gottlieb, president of the Artists’ Union, one of the sponsoring organizations, states the case simply, “As artists this group has made important contributions to our cultural life. They have exhibited in American museums and galleries. They are members of American artists organizations and are accepted as American artists. Their dismissal not only deprives the country of their talent, but in effect, denies their right to be artists.”

The exhibition’s level is high, with Chuzo Tamotzu and Yasuo Kuniyoshi representing the high water marks. Tamotzu’s “Jersey Station” is a sober harmony of greens and browns, with, a breath-taking freshness in the handling of the palette knife.

Kuniyoshi’s painting of a demimondaine in a wicker chair is as fine in its aristocratic greys and sensuous drawing as anything the artist has done which means that it is very fine indeed.

Eitaro Ishigaki devotes two pictures to the feats of the Basque women who hurled the Italian “volunteers” into the sea. Sakari Suzuki has three solidly constructed conceptions, ingratiatingly painted; C Yamasaki’s “Noonday Rest” is good solid painting with genuine feeling; Don Gook Wu’s “Unlovely Sunset” is wild Expressionism a la Orient; Thomas Nagai’s gouache and water colors are able renditions of mood and place.

Other exhibitors are Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

The New York Post, September 18, 1937, said

Chinese Artists Join Japanese in WPA Job Protest
Forget War in Fighting Project Exclusion—“Fail to Support” China Invasion

While their fellow-countrymen were fighting it out to the death 10,000 miles away, many of New York’s Chinese and Japanese artists collaborated this week in a joint art exhibition at the A. C. A. Gallery under sponsorship of the Artists’ Union and the American Artists’ Congress.

Though the artists manifested their solidarity in the face of the Sino-Japanese conflict, the primary motivation for their show arose not from the situation in the Far East but that in the United States. I refer to the exclusion of noncitizens from WPA jobs.

Because of their ineligibility for American citizenship, the discrimination against Orientals was 100 per cent. Let Chuzo Tamotzu, delegate of the Japanese-Chinese group on the recent job march to Washington, sum up the situation:

“Most of us have been here at least fifteen to twenty-five years, living and working as American artists, and accepted as such. For example, Kuniyoshi has been invited to the Carnegie International not as a Japanese but as an American.

Still Subject to the Draft

“We expect to continue to live here. In the event of war, we should be subject to the draft, just as we were in the last war. Why, then, should we be discriminated against in social benefits?

“I might add that we want to live here peacefully and as advocates of peace and culture, in harmony with the peace policy of the present United States Administration. Thus we have nothing to do with support of the Japanese Army now unjustly invading China.”

This is a case that does not have to be supported on principles alone. The exhibit presents achievements which were largely made possible, except in the case of Kuniyoshi, by WPA. They are now deprived of its support.

Exhibit Excellent Work

There is the powerful thrust of Ishigaki’s aroused peasants and workers, the forceful symbolist work of Suzuki, the sensitive naturalism of Tamotzu and the light fancy of Nagai. Sober strength marks Tagawa’s “Chinese Toilers.” Excellent textural quality is found in a still life by a quite new exhibitor, Kiyoshi Shimizu.

G. [sic] W. Young’s impressionist landscapes and Don Gook Wu’s more subjectively accented canvases are the most interesting work by Chinese-born painters.

Here, then, is a challenge to liberals. A group of artists active in the midst of American cultural life has been legally put beyond the pale. Can progressives afford to rest until this reactionary step which narrows the base of American culture has been rescinded?

Art Front, October 1937, said

Chinese and Japanese Artists
While the minions of Mitsui and Mitsubishi are pouring death on China from the sea and air and the torn bodies of women and children writhe in the shattered cities, American reactionaries are conducting their own offensive against American Orientals. With the impartiality characteristic of American diplomacy, which goes in for “neutrality” measures like the current embargo against both imperialist Japan and bleeding China, the W.P.A. Administration has ruled all aliens off the projects. This includes, of course, all those who are prohibited by law from becoming citizens. Since only white aliens and those of African descent are eligible for citizenship, Asiatics find themselves on the proscribed list.

Japanese and Chinese artists have just concluded an exhibition at the A.C.A. Gallery, welding in common persecution their collective desire to function as artists and Americans. Sponsored by the Artists Union, the Artists’ Congress and the Citizens’ Committee for Support of W.P.A., the exhibition indicated the contributions of the Chinese and Japanese to American culture.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, for instance, who is represented in many American museums as an American artist, and who was invited to the Carnegie International as an American, is a major influence in our art life. Not on W.P.A., Kuniyoshi sent one of his finest canvasses and several lithographs to the show as a gesture of solidarity with his brother artists and Orientals.

With W.P.A. support withdrawn and the chances of private patronage as remote as ever, these Japanese-American and Chinese-American artists are in serious danger of being eliminated from the art field, to say nothing of life itself. And, despite their great contribution to American culture, they will become the victims of reaction unless the liberal and progressive forces get busy and build a strong defense.

In the exhibition are the vibrant landscapes of Chuso Tamotsu, with “Jersey Station” and “Firetrap” outstanding in their quiet harmonies of green and brown: the anti-imperialist canvases of Eitaro Ishigaki, with two Spanish subjects of Basque women hurling Italian fascist “volunteers” into the sea; the sensitive water-colors and gouaches of Thomas Nagai; the socially symbolic montages of Sakari Suzuki; Don Gook Wu’s colorful impressionism and work by C. Yamasaki, Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

The New York Post, March 19, 1938, said

Chinese Club Show
The third annual exhibition by members and friends of the Chinese Art Club is now current at 175 Canal Street.

Some participants, such as K. L. Eng, Jack Chen and Mowee Tiam, have turned in work bearing on the dedication of the show to the defense of the Chinese people. Others have followed their older tendencies, Chu H. Jor showing richly painted still lifes of livid lobsters and fruit. Chu W. Young an impressionist landscape, Tschai Lenzene genre landscapes and Yee Ching-Chih landscapes in the Chinese brush technique.

Work by American artists includes Oronzio Maldarelli’s handsome dancer, Guy Maccoy’s “The Old Tree,” two compositions by Genoi Pettit, a still life by Arthur Schwieder and a drawing by Neysa McMein.

An endnote mentioned Young in Asian American Art: A History, 1850–1970 (2008).

Young has not been found in the 1930, 1940 and 1950 United States censuses. A search for his World War II draft card or enlistment record yielded no results.
 

Young was listed as a life member of the Art Students League in the 1951 publication, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Presents the 75th Anniversary Exhibition of Painting & Sculpture by 75 Artists Associated with the Art Students League of New York.

The following are possible matches for the artist. The Schenectady Gazette (New York), August 15, 1944, published the Schenectady Savings Bank notice for unclaimed property. The list included someone named Chu Young who lived at 409 Franklin Street in Schenectady. On March 17, 1956 a passenger named Young Chu was aboard a Pan American World Airways flight bound for London, England. Someone named Young Chu became a naturalized citizen on June 17, 1968 in New York City. He was born on November 16, 1901.

What became of the artist is not known.

 

Related Posts
Artist Chu H. Jor and the Chinese Art Club 

Chu Jor in the American Artists Congress 2nd Annual Exhibition
Chu H. Jor, Moo-Wee Tiam, Don Gook Wu and C. W. Young at ACA Gallery, September 1937
Searching for Moowee Tiam, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club
Sui Wesley Chan, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club
Howard Low, Artist and Illustrator

 

 

(Next post on Wednesday: A Few Details About K. L. Eng, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club)

Searching for Moowee Tiam, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Moo-Wee Tiam has not been found in the United States censuses, immigration and military records. His name may have been a pseudonym. Tiam’s first name had been spelled Moowee, Mowee, and Moo-Wee.

The New York Post, October 24, 1936, said

Chinese Art Club Holds Canal Street Exhibit
Those who cherish the racial interpretation of art will find some matter to ponder in the exhibit by members of the Chinese Art Club in their new quarters at 175 Canal Street. For nine-tenths of the work shown is indistinguishable from contemporary occidental art.

Howard Low is most alert to advanced modern trends, creating abstract designs, lively drawings of city life, and intimate paintings like “Goldfish Bowl,” all very well done. Chu W. Young is an able exponent of impressionist landscape art, and Chu H. Jor paints still life with a soft patine of color. Others showing are Mowee Tiam, Harry Wong, Stanley Chin, Tschai Lanzene, K. L. Eng, Bennie Sonn and S. V. Pang.

The New York Sun, April 27, 1937, said

City Artists Open Their Exhibition
Preview of Display Given in Municipal Gallery
The twenty-second exhibition in the series arranged by the resident artists of New York city in the temporary galleries of the Municipal Art Committee, 62 West Fifty-third street, was opened with a preview this afternoon for the exhibiting artists and members of the Municipal Art Committee. The exhibition will open to the public tomorrow at noon and will continue through Sunday, May 16.

Four groups of artists are showing oil paintings of their own selection in the four galleries of the building. These groups are self-organized and applied for space for the exhibition and sale of their works without expense and without jury. The members of these groups are as follows.

Gallery 1—Ignatius Banasewicz, Aaron Fastovsky, Ben Galos, F. Wynn Graham, Gitel Kahn, Ragnar Olson, Emma Shumaker and Ted Witonski.

Gallery 2—William Cole Gray, Carolyn Haeberlin, Sally Mewhinney, Laura S. Parsons, Roslyn Reich, Roger Vernam and Mary Burton Wallis.

Gallery 3—Lucien Bildsteln, Eugene H. Bischoff, Paula Eliasoph, Rodney Lethbridge, S. L. Margolies, Albert A. Munro, Leslie H. Nash, Sara M. Pinkus, Malvina C. Slonin and Robert Zoeller.

Galleries 4 and 5—Salvatore Cannizzo, Stanley H. Chin, Frank Giovinazzo, Chu H. Jor, Nicholas Markatos, Irving H. Novick, Evangeline St. Clair and Moowee Tiam.

The temporary galleries are open daily including Sundays from 12 noon to 6 P. M. They are closed on Mondays. Admission is free.

The New York Times, May 2, 1937, said

Five of the Current Group Shows
A reasonably modern tinge may be noted at the temporary galleries of the Municipal Art Committee, where the galleries on all four floors are occupied by oil paintings in the twenty-second exhibition of the series by resident New York artists. Thirty-three are represented in the four self-organized groups currently showing (until May 16). More than half of the artists have studied at the Art Students League. ...

... Three Chinese artists and two of Italian birth are exhibitors in Gallery IV. Chu Jor’s painstaking still-life study of textures, in vivid color, is inscribed to the memory of Gauguin. Moowee Tiam contributes a self-portrait which gives no warning of the other work from his brushes—“The Awakening,” suggesting something from the Book of Revelations.

The New York Times, May 24, 1937, said

Chinese Children Exhibit Art Work
First Show Its Kind Contains Scarcely Anything That Is Oriental in Character

The Chinese Art Club at 175 Canal Street opened yesterday its first exhibition of art work by Chinese children. The odd thing about the show is that scarcely any of it is Chinese in character.

The gallery itself, with its white ceiling, walls covered with monks’ cloth and white shaded lights, is very up to date. And instead of drawing dragons, mandarins, pagodas and almond-eyed princesses, the children have drawn cowboys, Indians, airplanes and such characters from our comic strips as Buck Rogers, Dickie Dare, Mandrake the Magician and Mickey Mouse.

In fact, were it not for the thirty examples of Chinese handwriting by the elder children, the snatches of Chinese writing beside some of the drawings, and the series of fifteen realistic pencil drawings of modern Chinese warfare by 13-year-old Paul Chu—were it not for these, the exhibition might be the work of any group of American children.

The Chinese children have drawn what other American children draw—Vikings, Arthurian knights, court ladies of the eighteenth century, and Indians with feathered head-dresses.

All but ten or twelve of the young artists were born in this country. They have been taught drawing in their homes, the Chinese Public School and the Chinese Christian Kindergarten. Moowee Tiam of the club’s governing board, who was in charge yesterday, said that none had gone to the WPA free art classes.

There is only one mural in the show. It was painted by 10-year-old Cora May Chu and shows two girls playing on a greenware. To their left is the bough of a fruit tree in blossom. Behind them is a lake and a mountain. There are three pieces of clay modeling, twenty-nine paintings, and about 215 drawings.

Among the patrons of the show are Dr. Lin Yutang, Pearl S. Buck, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Dr. Tsune-Chi Yu, Chinese Consul General in New York.

The Daily Worker (New York, New York), September 18, 1937, said

The Art World
Dismissed WPA Chinese and Japanese Artists Express Unity in Paintings at ACA Gallery
The New York art season is getting under way. Galleries in the Champagne Belt are brushing the summer’s cobwebs from the ceiling corners and oiling the door hinges. Collectors, professional and amateur, have returned to the city. The critics have returned from their summer wanderings prepared, as far as adjectives are concerned, for whatever may befall them.

One gallery has kept the torch bright during the past months, spreading both heat and light. The A. C. A. Gallery, 52 West 8th Street, has been staunch in its support of the pink slip artists of The Federal Art Project, having given them three consecutive shows.

The current one is of great importance. Chinese and Japanese artists are exhibiting together, symbolizing their common persecution as aliens without the right to apply for citizenship in a more oblique way, but in a sharper manner, they represent the unity of the Chinese and the Japanese people against the Japanese war-machine.

Dismissed from Art Field

However, it is on the basis of their work as artists that this group presents its case. Victims of the most reprehensible type of legislative discrimination on WPA, they are in serious danger of being wiped out of the art field.

In his prefatory statement, Harry Gottlieb, president of the Artists’ Union, one of the sponsoring organizations, states the case simply, “As artists this group has made important contributions to our cultural life. They have exhibited in American museums and galleries. They are members of American artists organizations and are accepted as American artists. Their dismissal not only deprives the country of their talent, but in effect, denies their right to be artists.”

The exhibition’s level is high, with Chuzo Tamotzu and Yasuo Kuniyoshi representing the high water marks. Tamotzu’s “Jersey Station” is a sober harmony of greens and browns, with, a breath-taking freshness in the handling of the palette knife.

Kuniyoshi’s painting of a demimondaine in a wicker chair is as fine in its aristocratic greys and sensuous drawing as anything the artist has done which means that it is very fine indeed.

Eitaro Ishigaki devotes two pictures to the feats of the Basque women who hurled the Italian “volunteers” into the sea. Sakari Suzuki has three solidly constructed conceptions, ingratiatingly painted; C Yamasaki’s “Noonday Rest” is good solid painting with genuine feeling; Don Gook Wu’s “Unlovely Sunset” is wild Expressionism a la Orient; Thomas Nagai’s gouache and water colors are able renditions of mood and place.

Other exhibitors are Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

Tiam had four paintings in the exhibition, “The Russian Kettle”, “Still Life”, “The Chinese Seamen”, and “The Farm House”.

Art Front, October 1937, said

Chinese and Japanese Artists
While the minions of Mitsui and Mitsubishi are pouring death on China from the sea and air and the torn bodies of women and children writhe in the shattered cities, American reactionaries are conducting their own offensive against American Orientals. With the impartiality characteristic of American diplomacy, which goes in for “neutrality” measures like the current embargo against both imperialist Japan and bleeding China, the W.P.A. Administration has ruled all aliens off the projects. This includes, of course, all those who are prohibited by law from becoming citizens. Since only white aliens and those of African descent are eligible for citizenship, Asiatics find themselves on the proscribed list.

Japanese and Chinese artists have just concluded an exhibition at the A.C.A. Gallery, welding in common persecution their collective desire to function as artists and Americans. Sponsored by the Artists Union, the Artists’ Congress and the Citizens’ Committee for Support of W.P.A., the exhibition indicated the contributions of the Chinese and Japanese to American culture.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, for instance, who is represented in many American museums as an American artist, and who was invited to the Carnegie International as an American, is a major influence in our art life. Not on W.P.A., Kuniyoshi sent one of his finest canvasses and several lithographs to the show as a gesture of solidarity with his brother artists and Orientals.

With W.P.A. support withdrawn and the chances of private patronage as remote as ever, these Japanese-American and Chinese-American artists are in serious danger of being eliminated from the art field, to say nothing of life itself. And, despite their great contribution to American culture, they will become the victims of reaction unless the liberal and progressive forces get busy and build a strong defense.

In the exhibition are the vibrant landscapes of Chuso Tamotsu, with “Jersey Station” and “Firetrap” outstanding in their quiet harmonies of green and brown: the anti-imperialist canvases of Eitaro Ishigaki, with two Spanish subjects of Basque women hurling Italian fascist “volunteers” into the sea; the sensitive water-colors and gouaches of Thomas Nagai; the socially symbolic montages of Sakari Suzuki; Don Gook Wu’s colorful impressionism and work by C. Yamasaki, Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

The New York Post, November 20, 1937, said

M. Tiam has been elected president of the Chinese Art Club, succeeding Chu H. Jor.

Chinese Digest, December 1937, said

N.Y. Art Club Starts Painting Class

New York City — The Chinese Art club, 175 Canal street, which has sponsored many cultural and art activities among the Chinese here, has recently embarked on another activity which promises to bring out art talent and appreciation of Chinese art among Chinese and Americans alike.

This new activity is the engagement of Miss Yee Ching-chih, professor of Chinese painting at the Shanghai Art college. As instructor of Chinese art, Miss Yee has started a class in Chinese painting at the art club’s studios. Classes are being held three times a week, and a limited number of American students may be enrolled.

The Chinese Art club, in announcing this class, said, “This is the first time that such an opportunity to study Chinese art under an experienced native teacher … has ever been made possible in New York.”

This organization is now in its third year of existence and is about the most active one of its kind in the country. Last June it sponsored the first Chinese children’s art exhibition in America which attracted wide attention among American educators and art critics (Chinese Digest for July, 1937, p. 13). The club has an annual membership exhibition, sponsors native plays, and opens its studios for cultural gatherings of all kinds. Its present president is Moowee Tiam.

Chinese Digest, March 1938, said

Art Club to Hold Painting and Photography Exhibits
New York—The Chinese Art club here will hold its third annual exhibit of paintings and sculpture at the club’s gallery, 175 Canal street, beginning March 1 and extending through March 25.

The exhibit will include works by Miss Yee Ching-chih, Jack Chen, Chu H. Jor, Kailuen Eng, Moowee Tiam, Tschai Lenzene, Howard Low, and others. Guest exhibitors will include Neysa McNein [sic], Oronzio Maladrelli, Guy Maccoy, Dimitri Romanovesky, and others.

Beginning April 1 and extending through April 15 the Chinese Art club will hold its second photographic salon. Prints for showing may be submitted by any Chinese in any part of the country, and may be of any size, but must be mounted. Submission of prints must be made on or before March 25, announced W. Yukon, in charge of this exhibit. All pictures submitted will be returned in their original wrappings to the senders after the close of the exhibition.

The New York Post, March 19, 1938, said

Chinese Club Show
The third annual exhibition by members and friends of the Chinese Art Club is now current at 175 Canal Street.

Some participants, such as K. L. Eng, Jack Chen and Mowee Tiam, have turned in work bearing on the dedication of the show to the defense of the Chinese people. Others have followed their older tendencies, Chu H. Jor showing richly painted still lifes of livid lobsters and fruit. Chu W. Young an impressionist landscape, Tschai Lenzene genre landscapes and Yee Ching-Chih landscapes in the Chinese brush technique.

Work by American artists includes Oronzio Maldarelli’s handsome dancer, Guy Maccoy’s “The Old Tree,” two compositions by Genoi Pettit, a still life by Arthur Schwieder and a drawing by Neysa McMein.

The New York Times, December 9, 1938, said

The Chinese Art Club has elected Chu Jor as its president succeeding Moowee Tiam, at its fourth annual meeting, recently held. The club will continue this season to introduce to the Chinese and American public the work of Chinese and American artists. The annual children’s exhibition, which will include the work of Chinese children from San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and other cities, will be held in the club gallery in February.

Chinese Digest, January 1939, said

New Officers for N.Y. Chinese Art Club
New York—The Chinese Art Club here at its fourth annual meeting elected Chu Jor for its next president, succeeding Moowee Tiam. Others elected included K.L. Eng, Wesley S. Chan, Marquis Chunn, Arthur Lee, and Stanley H. Chin.

The club is now preparing for its next annual Children’s Art exhibition. This year it intends to have a nation-wide representation and Chinese children’s art work from the Chinese communities of San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and other Chinatowns.

Tiam was mentioned in Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History (2013). Tiam was listed in the 1948 book, Supplement to Mallett’s Index of Artists, International—Biographical Including Painters, Sculptors, Illustrators, Engravers and Etchers of the Past and the Present.

What became of Tiam is not known.

 

Related Posts

Artist Chu H. Jor and the Chinese Art Club 

Chu Jor in the American Artists Congress 2nd Annual Exhibition

Chu H. Jor, Moo-Wee Tiam, Don Gook Wu and C. W. Young at ACA Gallery, September 1937

Searching for C.W. Young, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

K. L. Eng, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Sui Wesley Chan, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Howard Low, Artist and Illustrator

 

 

(Next post on Wednesday: Searching for C.W. Young, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club)

Chu H. Jor, Moo-Wee Tiam, Don Gook Wu and C. W. Young at ACA Gallery, September 1937

American Contemporary Art Gallery

“Paintings by New York Chinese and Japanese Artists”

1. Chu H. Jor: “Still Life”

2. Moo-Wee Tiam: “The Russian Kettle”, “Still Life”, “The Chinese Seamen”, 

    “The Farm House”

3. Don Gook Wu: “Unlovely Sunset”, “The Island”

4. C. W. Young: “The Window”, “Landscape”

 

Daily Worker

September 18, 1937

Dismissed WPA Chinese and Japanese Artists Express Unity in Paintings at ACA Gallery
 

The New York art season is getting under way. Galleries in the Champagne Belt are brushing the summer’s cobwebs from the ceiling corners and oiling the door hinges. Collectors, professional and amateur, have returned to the city. The critics have returned from their summer wanderings prepared, as far as adjectives are concerned, for whatever may befall them.

One gallery has kept the torch bright during the past months, spreading both heat and light. The A. C. A. Gallery, 52 West 8th Street, has been staunch in its support of the pink slip artists of The Federal Art Project, having given them three consecutive shows.

The current one is of great importance. Chinese and Japanese artists are exhibiting together, symbolizing their common persecution as aliens without the right to apply for citizenship in a more oblique way, but in a sharper manner, they represent the unity of the Chinese and the Japanese people against the Japanese war-machine.

Dismissed from Art Field

However, it is on the basis of their work as artists that this group presents its case. Victims of the most reprehensible type of legislative discrimination on WPA, they are in serious danger of being wiped out of the art field.

In his prefatory statement, Harry Gottlieb, president of the Artists’ Union, one of the sponsoring organizations, states the case simply, “As artists this group has made important contributions to our cultural life. They have exhibited in American museums and galleries. They are members of American artists organizations and are accepted as American artists. Their dismissal not only deprives the country of their talent, but in effect, denies their right to be artists.”

The exhibition’s level is high, with Chuzo Tamotzu and Yasuo Kuniyoshi representing the high water marks. Tamotzu’s “Jersey Station” is a sober harmony of greens and browns, with, a breath-taking freshness in the handling of the palette knife.

Kuniyoshi’s painting of a demimondaine in a wicker chair is as fine in its aristocratic greys and sensuous drawing as anything the artist has done which means that it is very fine indeed.

Eitaro Ishigaki devotes two pictures to the feats of the Basque women who hurled the Italian “volunteers” into the sea. Sakari Suzuki has three solidly constructed conceptions, ingratiatingly painted; C. Yamasaki’s “Noonday Rest” is good solid painting with genuine feeling; Don Gook Wu’s “Unlovely Sunset” is wild Expressionism a la Orient; Thomas Nagai’s gouache and water colors are able renditions of mood and place.

Other exhibitors are Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

New York Post
September 18, 1937

Chinese Artists Join Japanese in WPA Job Protest
Forget War in Fighting Project Exclusion—“Fail to Support” China Invasion

While their fellow-countrymen were fighting it out to the death 10,000 miles away, many of New York’s Chinese and Japanese artists collaborated this week in a joint art exhibition at the A. C. A. Gallery under sponsorship of the Artists’ Union and the American Artists’ Congress.

Though the artists manifested their solidarity in the face of the Sino-Japanese conflict, the primary motivation for their show arose not from the situation in the Far East but that in the United States. I refer to the exclusion of noncitizens from WPA jobs.

Because of their ineligibility for American citizenship, the discrimination against Orientals was 100 per cent. Let Chuzo Tamotzu, delegate of the Japanese-Chinese group on the recent job march to Washington, sum up the situation:

“Most of us have been here at least fifteen to twenty-five years, living and working as American artists, and accepted as such. For example, Kuniyoshi has been invited to the Carnegie International not as a Japanese but as an American.

Still Subject to the Draft

“We expect to continue to live here. In the event of war, we should be subject to the draft, just as we were in the last war. Why, then, should we be discriminated against in social benefits?

“I might add that we want to live here peacefully and as advocates of peace and culture, in harmony with the peace policy of the present United States Administration. Thus we have nothing to do with support of the Japanese Army now unjustly invading China.”

This is a case that does not have to be supported on principles alone. The exhibit presents achievements which were largely made possible, except in the case of Kuniyoshi, by WPA. They are now deprived of its support.

Exhibit Excellent Work

There is the powerful thrust of Ishigaki’s aroused peasants and workers, the forceful symbolist work of Suzuki, the sensitive naturalism of Tamotzu and the light fancy of Nagai. Sober strength marks Tagawa’s “Chinese Toilers.” Excellent textural quality is found in a still life by a quite new exhibitor, Kiyoshi Shimizu.

G. [sic] W. Young’s impressionist landscapes and Don Gook Wu’s more subjectively accented canvases are the most interesting work by Chinese-born painters.

Here, then, is a challenge to liberals. A group of artists active in the midst of American cultural life has been legally put beyond the pale. Can progressives afford to rest until this reactionary step which narrows the base of American culture has been rescinded?

Art Front

October 1937

Chinese and Japanese Artists

While the minions of Mitsui and Mitsubishi are pouring death on China from the sea and air and the torn bodies of women and children writhe in the shattered cities, American reactionaries are conducting their own offensive against American Orientals. With the impartiality characteristic of American diplomacy, which goes in for “neutrality” measures like the current embargo against both imperialist Japan and bleeding China, the W.P.A. Administration has ruled all aliens off the projects. This includes, of course, all those who are prohibited by law from becoming citizens. Since only white aliens and those of African descent are eligible for citizenship, Asiatics find themselves on the proscribed list.

Japanese and Chinese artists have just concluded an exhibition at the A.C.A. Gallery, welding in common persecution their collective desire to function as artists and Americans. Sponsored by the Artists Union, the Artists’ Congress and the Citizens’ Committee for Support of W.P.A., the exhibition indicated the contributions of the Chinese and Japanese to American culture.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, for instance, who is represented in many American museums as an American artist, and who was invited to the Carnegie International as an American, is a major influence in our art life. Not on W.P.A., Kuniyoshi sent one of his finest canvasses and several lithographs to the show as a gesture of solidarity with his brother artists and Orientals.

With W.P.A. support withdrawn and the chances of private patronage as remote as ever, these Japanese-American and Chinese-American artists are in serious danger of being eliminated from the art field, to say nothing of life itself. And, despite their great contribution to American culture, they will become the victims of reaction unless the liberal and progressive forces get busy and build a strong defense.

In the exhibition are the vibrant landscapes of Chuso Tamotsu, with “Jersey Station” and “Firetrap” outstanding in their quiet harmonies of green and brown: the anti-imperialist canvases of Eitaro Ishigaki, with two Spanish subjects of Basque women hurling Italian fascist “volunteers” into the sea; the sensitive water-colors and gouaches of Thomas Nagai; the socially symbolic montages of Sakari Suzuki; Don Gook Wu’s colorful impressionism and work by C. Yamasaki, Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

 

Related Posts
Artist Chu H. Jor and the Chinese Art Club 

Chu Jor in the American Artists Congress 2nd Annual Exhibition
Searching for Moowee Tiam, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club
Searching for C.W. Young, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

K. L. Eng, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Sui Wesley Chan, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Howard Low, Artist and Illustrator

 

 

(Next post on Wednesday: Chu Jor in the American Artists Congress 2nd Annual Exhibition)

Artist Chu H. Jor and the Chinese Art Club

Chu H. Jor was born Chu Hin-jor on October 2, 1907, in Canton, China, according to Who’s Who in American Art, 1935, and 1936–1937 editions. His Chinese Exclusion Act case file has not yet been found. The case file would have his parents’ names and date of his arrival in the United States.

Below is a chronological list of Chu H. Jor and the Chinese Art Club in various publications.

The Allied Artists of America: Twenty-first Annual Exhibition, 1934, April Sixth to May Sixth, Inclusive
Brooklyn Museum, 1934

Chu H. Jor
68 Flowers

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(New York)
April 8, 1934

Allied Artists Hold 21st Annual Exhibition
The Allied Artists of America are holding their 21st annual exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum simultaneously with the Centennial exhibition. The startling and forgotten fact that it is the 21st annual gives rise to almost as many nostalgic memories as the Americana included in the exhibition across the corridor. …

… The art lover in search of decorative landscape and still life will find that the present collection offers a wide variety of well painted canvases suitable for such purposes. Maud Mason, Emma Fordyce MacRae, Dorothy Ochtman, Chu H. Jor, Paul Fuerstenberg, Percy Albee, John Wells James and William Donahue are among the still life painters whose work calls for special mention.

The New York Times
November 18, 1934

In Local Galleries: A Score of New Openings
Melange—One of Paul Berdanier’s Moret canvases; a sturdily modeled figure by Chu Hin Jor, a Chinese; several of the sinister Paris nocturnes by M. de Corini; a vigorous Winter landscape by Lars Hoftrup, and a still-life by Charlotte Blass are among the assortment in the current exhibition at Caz-Delbo’s. Until Dec. 1.

Who’s Who in American Art
Volume 1, 1935
Alice Coe McGlauflin, Editor
American Federation of Arts

Jor, Chu H., 175 Canal St., New York, N. Y. P. — Born Canton China, Oct. 2, 1907. Pupil of Michel Jacobs, George Bridgman, Dimitri Romanovsky; in China. Member: Allied AA; Chinese AC (pres.).

The New York Times
December 29, 1935

The first annual of paintings and drawings at the Chinese Art Club, 10 Pell Street, Dec. 20–Jan. 20.

Utica Observer
(New York)
January 5, 1936

Down amid the twisted streets of New York’s Chinatown (at 10 Pell Street) an exhibition of paintings and drawings by members of the Chinese Art Club is now in progress. It is the first exhibition of Chinese artists living here and includes work done by former students of the Chicago Art Institute and of local institutions.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
(New York)
January 19, 1936

Chinese Artists Show Work in New York
Down amid the twisted streets of New York’s Chinatown (at 10 Pell Street) an exhibition of paintings and drawings by members of the Chinese Art Club is now in progress, according to the Associated Press.

It is the first exhibition of Chinese artists living there and includes work done by former students of the Chicago Art Institute and New York art institutions.

New York Sun
October 12, 1936

Will Open Gallery
Chinese Art Club to Show Paintings and Sculpture.

The Chinese Art Club will open a new gallery at 175 Canal street, in Chinatown, Wednesday evening at 8 o’clock, with an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by twenty Chinese and American artists, Chu H. Jor, president of the club, announced today.

The club was founded last year and held exhibitions last winter at 10 Pell street, but this is the first time, Mr. Jor said, that the club has had an adequate gallery to display the work of members.

Among the exhibitors are Oronzio Madarelli, Stuyvesant Van Veen, Tschia Lenzene. Harry Wong, Howard Low and K. L. Eng.

Mr. Jor said that there would be exhibitions from time to time during the winter, together with Oriental music and dance concerts, and reading of Oriental literature.

“Our purpose is to introduce Chinese art to the American public and Occidental art to the Chinese public,” Mr. Jor said. “That is why we have American artists among our members and sponsors. Many of our Chinese painters, too, have lived in America all of their lives, and their work is modern and individual, and not Oriental.”

New York Post
October 24, 1936

Chinese Art Club Holds Canal Street Exhibit
Those who cherish the racial interpretation of art will find some matter to ponder in the exhibit by members of the Chinese Art Club in their new quarters at 175 Canal Street. For nine-tenths of the work shown is indistinguishable from contemporary occidental art.

Howard Low is most alert to advanced modern trends, creating abstract designs, lively drawings of city life, and intimate paintings like “Goldfish Bowl,” all very well done. Chu W. Young is an able exponent of impressionist landscape art, and Chu H. Jor paints still life with a soft patine of color. Others showing are Mowee Tiam, Harry Wong, Stanley Chin, Tschai Lanzene, K. L. Eng, Bennie Sonn and S. V. Pang.

New York Post
December 26, 1936

Last night the Chinese Art Club opened the First Chinese Photographic Salon at 175 Canal Street.

New York Sun
December 26, 1936

Chinese Club Shown Photographs.
The Chinese Art Club opened the first Chinese photographic salon last evening at 175 Canal street. The exhibitors are composed chiefly of Chinese amateur photographers. This new division of the Chinese Art Club was recently formed The special committee in charge of this exhibit includes Foo Chu, W. Yukon, Y. T. Lou and Kang Chu.

Who’s Who in American Art
Volume 1, 1936–1937
Alice Coe McGlauflin, Editor
American Federation of Arts

Hin-jor Chu, 577 Lenox Ave.; h. 164 East 86th St., New York, N.Y.
Port. P. [Portrait Painter]—Born Canton, China, Oct. 2, 1907. Pupil of Michel Jacobs, George Bridgman, Dimitri Romanovsky; in China. Member: Allied AA. [Allied Artists of America]

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(New York)
March 20, 1937
 Many Attend Exhibition Opening at Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum opened an exhibition of the Frank Crowninshield collection of African Negro Sculpture with a preview for members and guest of the museum yesterday afternoon. The exhibition is open to the public today and will remain on view through April 25.

Among those present at the preview were: … Miss Yee Ching Chin [sic], Chu H. Jor, …

New York Sun
April 27, 1937

City Artists Open Their Exhibition
Preview of Display Given in Municipal Gallery
The twenty-second exhibition in the series arranged by the resident artists of New York city in the temporary galleries of the Municipal Art Committee, 62 West Fifty-third street, was opened with a preview this afternoon for the exhibiting artists and members of the Municipal Art Committee. The exhibition will open to the public tomorrow at noon and will continue through Sunday, May 16.

Four groups of artists are showing oil paintings of their own selection in the four galleries of the building. These groups are self-organized and applied for space for the exhibition and sale of their works without expense and without jury. The members of these groups are as follows.

Gallery 1—Ignatius Banasewicz, Aaron Fastovsky, Ben Galos, F. Wynn Graham, Gitel Kahn, Ragnar Olson, Emma Shumaker and Ted Witonski.

Gallery 2—William Cole Gray, Carolyn Haeberlin, Sally Mewhinney, Laura S. Parsons, Roslyn Reich, Roger Vernam and Mary Burton Wallis.

Gallery 3—Lucien Bildsteln, Eugene H. Bischoff, Paula Eliasoph, Rodney Lethbridge, S. L. Margolies, Albert A. Munro, Leslie H. Nash, Sara M. Pinkus, Malvina C. Slonin and Robert Zoeller.

Galleries 4 and 5—Salvatore Cannizzo, Stanley H. Chin, Frank Giovinazzo, Chu H. Jor, Nicholas Markatos, Irving H. Novick, Evangeline St. Clair and Moowee Tiam.

The temporary galleries are open daily including Sundays from 12 noon to 6 P. M. They are closed on Mondays. Admission is free.

The New York Times
May 2, 1937

Five of the Current Group Shows
A reasonably modern tinge may be noted at the temporary galleries of the Municipal Art Committee, where the galleries on all four floors are occupied by oil paintings in the twenty-second exhibition of the series by resident New York artists. Thirty-three are represented in the four self-organized groups currently showing (until May 16). More than half of the artists have studied at the Art Students League. ...

... Three Chinese artists and two of Italian birth are exhibitors in Gallery IV. Chu Jor’s painstaking still-life study of textures, in vivid color, is inscribed to the memory of Gauguin. Moowee Tiam contributes a self-portrait which gives no warning of the other work from his brushes—“The Awakening,” suggesting something from the Book of Revelations

New York Post
May 8, 1937

Municipal Galleries Stage 22d Exhibition
The twenty-second exhibition is current at the Municipal Art Galleries with the usual complement of four self-constituted groups. Gallery I contains such diverse types as Emma Shumaker’s Cezannesque landscape, Ted Witonski’s blunt still life, a vivid street scene by Ben Galos and Aaron Fastovsky’s mystical “Race Against Time.”

Vigorous figure and landscape work by Mary Button Wallis merits attention in the second floor group. Others here are Sally Mewhinney, Laura S. Parsons, William Cole Gray, Roslyn Reich and Roger Vernam. More conventional work will he found in the two remaining groups, which include Paula Eliasoph, S L. Margolies, Albert A. Munro, Eugene H. Bischoff, Leslie H. Nash and, on the top floor, Salvatore Cannizzo, Stanley H. Chin, Frank Giovinazzo, Chu H. Jor, Nicholas Margatos, Irving H. Novick, Evangeline St. Claire and Moowee Tiam. Miss St. Claire’s small paintings are lively and colorful.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(New York)
May 21, 1937

Pearl Buck to Open Chinese Art Show
When the first Chinese Children's Art Exhibition in America opens tomorrow afternoon in the Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal St., Manhattan, the crash of the Hindenburg and the antics of comic-strip characters will vie with Oriental vases and incense burners as subjects in compositions by 103 youthful painters.

Pearl Buck, novelist, and Dr. Tsune-chi Yu, Chinese Consul General in New York, will attend the opening, according to an announcement by Chu H. Jor, president of of the club.

The New York Times
May 22, 1937

The first local exhibition of Chinese children’s art opens today at the Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street. It will be on view until June 20. The children range in age from 2 to 13 years. The exhibition has been organized and assembled by Chu H. Jor, president of the club, which was formed less than two years ago for the purpose of encouraging art appreciation among the Chinese in America.

The New York Times
May 24, 1937

Chinese Children Exhibit Art Work
First Show of Its Kind Contains Scarcely Anything That Is Oriental in Character

The Chinese Art Club at 175 Canal Street opened yesterday its first exhibition of art work by Chinese children. The odd thing about the show is that scarcely any of it is Chinese in character.

The gallery itself, with its white ceiling, walls covered with monks’ cloth and white shaded lights, is very up to date. And instead of drawing dragons, mandarins, pagodas and almond-eyed princesses, the children have drawn cowboys, Indians, airplanes and such characters from our comic strips as Buck Rogers, Dickie Dare, Mandrake the Magician and Mickey Mouse.

In fact, were it not for the thirty examples of Chinese handwriting by the elder children, the snatches of Chinese writing beside some of the drawings, and the series of fifteen realistic pencil drawings of modern Chinese warfare by 13-year-old Paul Chu—were it not for these, the exhibition might be the work of any group of American children.

The Chinese children have drawn what other American children draw—Vikings, Arthurian knights, court ladies of the eighteenth century, and Indians with feathered head-dresses.

All but ten or twelve of the young artists were born in this country. They have been taught drawing in their homes, the Chinese Public School and the Chinese Christian Kindergarten. Moowee Tiam of the club’s governing board, who was in charge yesterday, said that none had gone to the WPA free art classes.

There is only one mural in the show. It was painted by 10-year-old Cora May Chu and shows two girls playing on a greenware. To their left is the bough of a fruit tree in blossom. Behind them is a lake and a mountain. There are three pieces of clay modeling, twenty-nine paintings, and about 215 drawings.

Among the patrons of the show are Dr. Lin Yutang, Pearl S. Buck, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Dr. Tsune-Chi Yu, Chinese Consul General in New York.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(New York)
June 6, 1937

Galleries
Chinese Art Club (175 Canal)—Chinese children’s exhibit, to June 20.

Chinese Digest
July 1937

The Chinese Art Club of New York held the first Chinese Children’s Art Exhibition in America in that city from May 22 to June 20. A total of 124 paintings, water-colors, drawings, calligraphy, and sculptures by children ranging in age from 2 1/2 to 16 were shown. The prize winning color drawing shown above was executed by E. Jung, age 15. The lower picture shows a group of girls who participated in the exhibition at the refreshment table. [I believe the artist was Earl Jung, the World War II veteran of the 407th Air Service Squardon.]

Daily Worker
(New York, New York)
September 18, 1937

The Art World
Dismissed WPA Chinese and Japanese Artists Express Unity in Paintings at ACA Gallery
The New York art season is getting under way. Galleries in the Champagne Belt are brushing the summer’s cobwebs from the ceiling corners and oiling the door hinges. Collectors, professional and amateur, have returned to the city. The critics have returned from their summer wanderings prepared, as far as adjectives are concerned, for whatever may befall them.

One gallery has kept the torch bright during the past months, spreading both heat and light. The A. C. A. Gallery, 52 West 8th Street, has been staunch in its support of the pink slip artists of The Federal Art Project, having given them three consecutive shows.

The current one is of great importance. Chinese and Japanese artists are exhibiting together, symbolizing their common persecution as aliens without the right to apply for citizenship in a more oblique way, but in a sharper manner, they represent the unity of the Chinese and the Japanese people against the Japanese war-machine.

Dismissed from Art Field

However, it is on the basis of their work as artists that this group presents its case. Victims of the most reprehensible type of legislative discrimination on WPA, they are in serious danger of being wiped out of the art field.

In his prefatory statement, Harry Gottlieb, president of the Artists’ Union, one of the sponsoring organizations, states the case simply, “As artists this group has made important contributions to our cultural life. They have exhibited in American museums and galleries. They are members of American artists organizations and are accepted as American artists. Their dismissal not only deprives the
country of their talent, but in effect, denies their right to be artists.”

The exhibition’s level is high, with Chuzo Tamotzu and Yasuo Kuniyoshi representing the high water marks. Tamotzu’s “Jersey Station” is a sober harmony of greens and browns, with, a breath-taking freshness in the handling of the palette knife.

Kuniyoshi’s painting of a demimondaine in a wicker chair is as fine in its aristocratic greys and sensuous drawing as anything the artist has done which means that it is very fine indeed.

Eitaro Ishigaki devotes two pictures to the feats of the Basque women who hurled the Italian “volunteers” into the sea. Sakari Suzuki has three solidly constructed conceptions, ingratiatingly painted; C Yamasaki’s “Noonday Rest” is good solid painting with genuine feeling; Don Gook Wu’s “Unlovely Sunset” is wild Expressionism a la Orient; Thomas Nagai’s gouache and water colors are able renditions of mood and place.

Other exhibitors are Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

Art Front
October 1937

Exhibitions
Chinese and Japanese Artists
While the minions of Mitsui and Mitsubishi are pouring death on China from the sea and air and the torn bodies of women and children writhe in the shattered cities, American reactionaries are conducting their own offensive against American Orientals. With the impartiality characteristic of American diplomacy, which goes in for “neutrality” measures like the current embargo against both imperialist Japan and bleeding China, the W.P.A. Administration has ruled all aliens off the projects. This includes, of course, all those who are prohibited by law from becoming citizens. Since only white aliens and those of African descent are eligible for citizenship, Asiatics find themselves on the proscribed list.

Japanese and Chinese artists have just concluded an exhibition at the A.C.A. Gallery, welding in common persecution their collective desire to function as artists and Americans. Sponsored by the Artists Union, the Artists’ Congress and the Citizens’ Committee for Support of W.P.A., the exhibition indicated the contributions of the Chinese and Japanese to American culture.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, for instance, who is represented in many American museums as an American artist, and who was invited to the Carnegie International as an American, is a major influence in our art life. Not on W.P.A., Kuniyoshi sent one of his finest canvasses and several lithographs to the show as a gesture of solidarity with his brother artists and Orientals.

With W.P.A. support withdrawn and the chances of private patronage as remote as ever, these Japanese-American and Chinese-American artists are in serious danger of being eliminated from the art field, to say nothing of life itself. And, despite their great contribution to American culture, they will become the victims of reaction unless the liberal and progressive forces get busy and build a strong defense.

In the exhibition are the vibrant landscapes of Chuso Tamotsu, with “Jersey Station” and “Firetrap” outstanding in their quiet harmonies of green and brown: the anti-imperialist canvases of Eitaro Ishigaki, with two Spanish subjects of Basque women hurling Italian fascist “volunteers” into the sea; the sensitive water-colors and gouaches of Thomas Nagai; the socially symbolic montages of Sakari Suzuki; Don Gook Wu’s colorful impressionism and work by C. Yamasaki, Yosei Amemiya, Roy Kadowaki, Kaname Miyamoto, Fuji Nakamizo, Kiyoshi Shimisu, George Tera, Moo-Wee Tiam, Bunji Tagawa, Chu H. Jor and C. W. Young.

The New York Times
November 6, 1937

News of Art
The third year of the Chinese Art Club has been inaugurated by the election this month of M. Tiam as president. The showing of Chinese art, plays, exhibitions, classes and other cultural gatherings are among the club’s many activities.

New York Post
November 20, 1937

M. Tiam has been elected president of the Chinese Art Club, succeeding Chu H. Jor.

New York Sun
November 24, 1937

Chinese Woman Art Professor Teaches Ancient Scroll Painting to New Yorkers
Miss Ching Chih Yee, From Shanghai Art College, Is No Modern—She Goes Back Thousands of Years for Her Precedents.
One of China’s few women professors of painting is reviving the ancient art of the T’angs and the Sungs and the Mings in New York. At 175 Canal street in the Chinese Art Club, Miss Ching Chih Yee opened her first class this week in the art of Chinese scroll painting.

She is doing just what she has been doing in Shanghai for the last five years. She was the only woman professor of Chinese painting in the Shanghai Art College, until she left Shanghai nine months ago. She came to this country at the request of a group of overseas Chinese, to exhibit her work in Vancouver and in Dallas, Texas. Now she has decided to stay in New York until the World’s Fair, where she hopes to hang her scrolls in 1939. Meanwhile, she paints in the mornings, studies English in the afternoon, and teaches Chinese art on two evenings a week.

Her English at the moment is hesitant. It trails off into Mandarin every once in a while. But with the aid of Mr. Chu H. Jor, president of the Chinese Art Club, and in a combination of Mandarin, Shanghai dialect, Cantonese, and English, she told her story yesterday, over cups of tea which she had brewed on the old fashioned gas stove in the corner of her one and a half room apartment at 425 Second avenue. …

The New York Times
November 24, 1937

Art Brevities
A painting class conducted by Miss Yee Ching-Chih, Professor of Chinese Painting at the Shanghai Art College, is being held on Monday, Thursday and Friday evenings from 7 to 10 o’clock at the Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street.

Chinese Digest
December 1937

N.Y. Art Club Starts Painting Class
New York City — The Chinese Art club, 175 Canal street, which has sponsored many cultural and art activities among the Chinese here, has recently embarked on another activity which promises to bring out art talent and appreciation of Chinese art among Chinese and Americans alike.

This new activity is the engagement of Miss Yee Ching-chih, professor of Chinese painting at the Shanghai Art college. As instructor of Chinese art, Miss Yee has started a class in Chinese painting at the art club’s studios. Classes are being held three times a week, and a limited number of American students may be enrolled.

The Chinese Art club, in announcing this class, said, “This is the first time that such an opportunity to study Chinese art under an experienced native teacher … has ever been made possible in New York.”

This organization is now in its third year of existence and is about the most active one of its kind in the country. Last June it sponsored the first Chinese children’s art exhibition in America which attracted wide attention among American educators and art critics (Chinese Digest for July, 1937, p. 13). The club has an annual membership exhibition, sponsors native plays, and opens its studios for cultural gatherings of all kinds. Its present president is Moowee Tiam.

New York Sun
February 26, 1938

Chinese Art Club Exhibition.
The Chinese Art Club will open its third annual exhibit of paintings and sculpture at the club’s gallery in Chinatown, 175 Canal street, on Tuesday evening, March 1, at 8:30 o’clock, when a reception and private showing will he held. George Kin Leung, noted authority on the Chinese theater, will talk. The exhibition, which will continue through March 24 free to the public, will he dedicated to the war victims of China.

The New York Times
February 28, 1938

Varied Art Shows Listed for March
The Chinese Art Club will open its third annual exhibition.

Chinese Digest
March 1938

Art Club to Hold Painting and Photography Exhibits
New York—The Chinese Art club here will hold its third annual exhibit of paintings and sculpture at the club’s gallery, 175 Canal street, beginning March 1 and extending through March 25.

The exhibit will include works by Miss Yee Ching-chih, Jack Chen, Chu H. Jor, Kailuen Eng, Moowee Tiam, Tschai Lenzene, Howard Low, and others. Guest exhibitors will include Neysa McNein, Oronzio Maladrelli, Guy Maccoy, Dimitri Romanovesky, and others.

Beginning April 1 and extending through April 15 the Chinese Art club will hold its second photographic salon. Prints for showing may be submitted by any Chinese in any part of the country, and may be of any size, but must be mounted. Submission of prints must be made on or before March 25, announced W. Yukon, in charge of this exhibit. All pictures submitted will be returned in their original wrappings to the senders after the close of the exhibition.

The New York Times
March 3, 1938

Chinese Art Club Displays Paintings
Exhibit Dedicated to ‘Struggle Against Aggression’—Few War Pictures
The Chinese Art Club’s third annual exhibition was opened to the public yesterday at its galleries, 175 Canal Street. A sign at the entrance announced that the show was dedicated to “the Chinese struggle against Japanese aggression.”

There was little sign of that struggle, however, in the exhibition itself. War scenes were outnumbered by still-lifes by more than two to one. Only five of the fifty-two pictures dealt with the war, and one of these was contributed by Neysa McMein, one of the eight non-Chinese artists exhibiting.

The most ambitious of the war scenes was K.L. Eng’s painting of a refugee family. It showed a husband and wife fleeing with four children. The other war scenes were all small. They included a drawing of a woman volunteer, by Jack Chen; a wood engraving of a Chinese soldier encouraging men behind him, by Li Chun, and a water-color of a refugee, by Moowee Tiam, the club’s president.

The rest of the show was made up of pictures of fruits and flowers, pastoral landscapes and peaceful studies of people. And there was little evidence that all but ten of the works were by Chinese artists. Miss Yee Ching-chih’s three pictures and Harry Wong’s landscape were the only ones in the tradition of Chinese painting.

The exhibition will be open until March 25.

New York Post
March 19, 1938

Chinese Club Show
The third annual exhibition by members and friends of the Chinese Art Club is now current at 175 Canal Street.

Some participants, such as K. L. Eng, Jack Chen and Mowee Tiam, have turned in work bearing on the dedication of the show to the defense of the Chinese people. Others have followed their older tendencies, Chu H. Jor showing richly painted still lifes of livid lobsters and fruit. Chu W. Young an impressionist landscape, Tschai Lenzene genre landscapes and Yee Ching-Chih landscapes in the Chinese brush technique.

Work by American artists includes Oronzio Maldarelli’s handsome dancer, Guy Maccoy’s “The Old Tree,” two compositions by Genoi Pettit, a still life by Arthur Schwieder and a drawing by Neysa McMein.

The New York Times
March 20, 1938

Salon for Chinese
Setting March 25 as a deadline for receiving prints, the Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street, New York City, has issued an invitation to all Chinese photographers to submit their pictures for a salon and exhibition. Prints of any size are acceptable, but in all cases they must be mounted. The salon will be on display at the club from April 1 to 15.

New York Post
March 26, 1938

A spring group show is on at Vendome Galleries. P. Vogel’s trenchant landscapes, Ellis Wilson’s village scene at nightfall and John Sennhauser’s gouache figure are particularly worthy of note. Some other exhibitors are Jerome Meyers, Moses Soyer, Chu H. Jor, Lawrence Lebduska and Oronzo Gasparo.

Chinese Digest
May 1938

“Refugee”—A Painting by K. L. Eng
The Third Annual exhibition of the Chinese Art club in New York was held there March 1–25, in which fifty paintings, water-colors, sculpture, and woodcuts were seen. Twenty-five artists, 15 of whom were Chinese and the rest Americans, participated. The technique shown ranged from T’ang method, represented by Miss Yee Ching-chih, to abstraction, an example of which was Tschai Lenzene’s “Realization.” Both subject and technique, however, were predominantly western.

Chen Suichang’s “Lower Manhattan” has a photographic finish; Moowee Tiam’s “Russian Kettle” is good still-life painted with a mature hand and an eye for the significant details; while Chu H. Jor’s “Painting No. 1,” (Red Lobster on Blue Plate) shows promise of still further works to come. Chu's name is included in the current Who’s Who in American Art, first Chinese artist to be so honored in this publication so far. [Chu and Yun Gee appeared in the 1935 and 1936–1937 editions.]

The painting shown above is by K. L. Eng. Born in China, Eng studied in this country and once taught at the Cleveland Art School. His “Refugee” has a vivid realism hard to be duplicated even by some of China’s best contemporary artists whose theme is the present scene.

American Artists Congress 2nd Annual Exhibition
May 5–21, 1938
John Wanamaker, New York

Paintings
70. Chu Jor
Composition
Jor, Chu.....175 Canal Street, New York City

The New York Times
December 8, 1938

The Chinese Art Club Elects
The Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street, announced yesterday that it has elected its founder, Chu Jor, as the new president for the coming year. K. L. Eng was elected vice president and Wesley S. Chan treasurer. It also announced that its annual Chinese children’s show, which will be held in February, will not be confined to New York City, but will be national in scope.

The New York Times
December 9, 1938

News of Art
The Chinese Art Club has elected Chu Jor as its president succeeding Moowee Tiam, at its fourth annual meeting, recently held. The club will continue this season to introduce to the Chinese and American public the work of Chinese and American artists. The annual children’s exhibition, which will include the work of Chinese children from San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and other cities, will be held in the club gallery in February.

New York Post
December 10, 1938

Art Notes
Chu Jor has been elected president of the Chinese Art Club. ... Wang Yin Pao is showing Chinese paintings at the Art Students League.

The New York Times
December 16, 1938

Notes on Art
Chinese paintings may be seen until Dec. 26 at the galleries of the Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street. The galleries are open daily from noon to 6 P.M., and on Sunday from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.

New York Post
December 17, 1938

New Art Shows
Chinese Art Club: Chinese paintings

The New York Times
December 30, 1938

Art Notes
The exhibition of Chinese paintings current at the Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street, has been extended until Jan. 8. The gallery is open daily from 12 noon to 6 P.M., and on Sundays from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M.

New York Post
December 31, 1938

The Chinese Art Club has extended its exhibition of Chinese paintings until January 8.

New York Sun
December 31, 1938

Chinese Art Exhibit Continued.
The Chinese Art Club announces that the exhibition of Chinese paintings at the club gallery, 175 Canal street, will be extended January 8. The gallery of the Chinese Art Club is open daily from 12 noon to 6 P. M., Sunday 10 A. M. to 6 P. M.

Chinese Digest
January 1939

New Officers for N.Y. Chinese Art Club
New York—The Chinese Art Club here at its fourth annual meeting elected Chu Jor for its next president, succeeding Moowee Tiam. Others elected included K.L. Eng, Wesley S. Chan, Marquis Chunn, Arthur Lee, and Stanley H. Chin.

The club is now preparing for its next annual Children’s Art exhibition. This year it intends to have a nation-wide representation and Chinese children’s art work from the Chinese communities of San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and other Chinatowns.

The New York Times
June 18, 1939

Chinese Art Show Set
Work of Children All Over U.S. to Go On View Today
The Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal Street, which for two years has held exhibitions of local Chinese children’s work, announces that this year it is going to hold an exhibition by Chinese children all over the country.

It will open today and will include more than 500 pictures by Chinese children from virtually every Chinatown in America, from New Orleans and Los Angeles to Boston and even Honolulu.

Dr. Hu Shih, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, will be honorary chairman. Chu Jor, president of the club, is the active chairman, and among the sponsors are Pearl Buck, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

Daily Worker
(New York, New York)
July 6, 1939

Chinese Children Hold National Art Exhibit
Down at the Chinese Art Club, 175 Canal St., 287 water colors, crayons, pen and ink drawings, and oils have been assembled into one of the most colorful and interesting art shows available in New York City.

The material exhibited comes from practically every Chinese section in the United States, with 130 contributions from California, and 70 from New York. Though the “oldest” artist exhibiting is only 16, and the youngest is actually two years old, the show reveals an understanding of what is happening in today’s world that might well be emulated by many mature painters.

For the majority of the drawings and paintings deal with the Japanese invasion of China, and with the relation of the invasion to ite Western world especially the United States. Chicago’s 16-year-old O Lin Hom, for example, has contributed an effective cartoon showing Japan closing the door in China to Uncle Sam.

And although 16-year-old Chune Fook of Rose, California, has sent two flower panels, painted in traditional Chinese manner, the third contribution of the talented painter is a terrifying black and white plea for aid to the starving Chinese women and children.

That the young Chinese Americans have been well-schooled in ancient Chinese art forms can be seen in such wafer colors as that of Henry R. Chew, the 14-year-old Los Angeles lad who sent his lovely “Three Ancient Warriors” to the show. This is a water-color which goes back to the Third Century A.D. for its material, depicting the emperor, his general and prime minister.

Second Annual Show By Art Club

Two groups of water-colors, those of Ernest Louie of Cleveland and Charles Wong of San Francisco reveal top-flight talent, worthy in every way of the prizes and honor medals they have already been awarded by the judge.

The exhibition of Chinese Children’s Art is the second to be presented by the Chinese Art Club, which was founded in New York in 1935. The first exhibition was held in 1937, with contributions from New York’s young Chinese artists only. The present show is the first of national scope, and should be the forerunner of many others.

The honorary chairman of the present exhibition is Dr. Hu Shih, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, with many leading friends of China participating in the presentation.

The purpose of the Chinese Art Club is fourfold: to develop a keener appreciation for all the arts; to introduce Chinese arts to the American public and occidental art to the Chinese public; to encourage young artists and art students; to promote social fellowship.

The show, which closes on July 23rd, is open every day from 1 to 6 P.M. Admission is free; the catalogue contains seven reproductions, and is 10 cents.

The spectator may if he wishes, make a contribution toward the cause of peace in China.

Supplement to Mallett’s Index of Artists, International—Biographical
Including Painters, Sculptors, Illustrators, Engravers and Etchers of the Past and the Present
Daniel Trowbridge Mallett
Peter Smith, 1948

Chu, H. Jor. Chinese. b. Canton 1907; ad. New York. W. [watercolor]

Hin-Jor, Chu. Chinese, b. Canton, China 1907; ad. New York.

Jor, Chu H. Chinese. b. Canton 1907; ad. New York. W. [watercolor]

Asian American Art: A History, 1850–1970
Gordon H. Chang, Mark Dean Johnson, Paul J. Karlstrom, Sharon Spain
Stanford University Press, 2008
The Tip of the Iceberg: Early Asian American Artists in New York
Tom Wolf

… Chu H. Jor was active in Chinatown and founded the Chinese Art Club, which began in 1935 on Pell Street and then moved for several years to 175 Canal Street. The purpose of the club was to encourage young artists and art appreciation, and “to introduce Chinese artists to the American public and Occidental arts to the Chinese public.” The club held a series of exhibitions in the late 1930s, featuring works by Chinese artists plus some by non-Chinese. There were several shows of children’s art as well as of photography, and the art shows featured examples of the Chinese-style painting, including those by Yee Ching-chih, who offered classes in Chinese painting at the club. But most of the works were Western in style, probably including those of Jor, whose paintings are unknown today but who studied with American art teachers such as George Bridgman and Dimitri Romanovsky from the Art Students League.

Shaping and Reshaping Chinese American Identity: New York’s Chinese During the Depression and World War II
Jingyi Song
Lexington Books, 2010

On March 16, 1938, Chu H. Jor, a well-known artist, was invited to give a special lecture that traced the history of Chinese art.[53]

The Chinese Art Club was the first professional organization of Chinese American artists to organize annual gallery exhibitions to provide space and opportunities for Chinese American artists to express themselves through their artworks. Giving them a forum to air their feelings, views, and ideas about both China and the United States, the Chinese Art Club and its organized art exhibitions aided young Chinese American artists in rediscovering themselves.

Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History [3 volumes]: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History
Xiaojian Zhao, Edward J.W. Park Ph.D.
ABC-CLIO, 2013
Artists in New York (1900–1940)

… The artists who were adventurous enough to leave their native countries for the United States were independent spirits, and many of them had leftist political views. In the mid-1930s they organized three exhibitions at the progressive ACA Galleries protesting their exclusion from the government projects. These shows included both Japanese and Chinese artists, an unusual stepping up to visibility of the Chinese who tended to work within the Chinese community and not to have a presence in the established New York art world. They were led by Chu H. Jor, who studied at the Art Students League before founding the Chinese Art Club in Chinatown in 1935, to promote art awareness in his community. Unfortunately, little is known about the actual art made by Jor and his colleagues. …

Related Posts

Chu Jor in the American Artists Congress 2nd Annual Exhibition

Chu H. Jor, Moo-Wee Tiam, Don Gook Wu and C. W. Young at ACA Gallery, September 1937

Searching for Moowee Tiam, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Searching for C.W. Young, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

K. L. Eng, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Sui Wesley Chan, Artist and Member of the Chinese Art Club

Howard Low, Artist and Illustrator

 

 

(Updated December 26, 2024; next post on Friday: Yun Gee in Who’s Who in American Art)