Pan Tianshou was born in 1897 in Ninghai, Zhejiang Province. He was known by several names such as Tianshou and Dayi. His early training in painting was based on copying images from printed books depicting popular stories such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Tales of the Water Margins, and the Mustard Seed Garden Manual for Painting. His university education instilled in him a strong moral responsibility, which he applied to the preservation of Chinese painting as an art educator.Both representations of the lofty qualities of a scholar, the bamboo and orchid are revisited by Pan in this work. Here, Pan displays his competency in handling a traditional subject matter but perhaps imbues it with his personal interpretation. He captures the movements of the bamboo and simulates its twists and turns in his irregularly ordered inscription, a typical feature of his works. The bamboo he has created here is perhaps a representation of how he has personally coped with modernity with dignity and yet adapting and embracing change.
