Wu Hufan
Biography
Wu Hufan (1894–1968) was one of the most celebrated Chinese painters and connoisseurs of the 20th century, a man so deeply steeped in classical art that everything he touched carried the weight of centuries. Though primarily renowned for his exquisite landscape paintings and his legendary eye for authenticating ancient masterworks, artists of his era moved fluidly between disciplines — and the refined aesthetic world he inhabited was inseparable from the scholar's appreciation of Yixing teaware. He lived through China's most turbulent modern decades, yet remained a quiet guardian of classical beauty until the end.
Wu Hufan elevated the cultural prestige of traditional Chinese arts during the modern era, and his world of literati refinement kept the appreciation of scholar's objects — including fine Yixing teaware — alive and valued among China's educated elite.