Fang Zhaoling overcame hardship and tragedy to become a globally celebrated master of Chinese painting and calligraphy.
Her father was assassinated when she was 11, she fled war in Europe and invasion in Hong Kong, she and her husband took refuge in different parts of the mainland for a decade with a young and growing family, and she was suddenly widowed with eight children in 1950.
Undaunted, she ran the family business in Hong Kong and raised her children while developing her individualistic style, which some critics have said blends Chinese traditions with Impressionism.
Born into a family of well-off industrialists in Wuxi , Jiangsu Province , in 1914, she experienced tragedy early when her father was gunned down by three soldiers in front of his family. Her mother enrolled Zhaoling the following year to receive private tuition from local art teachers Tao Bofang and Yang Sizhen.
In 1937, Zhaoling became the only female Chinese student at the University of Manchester and the following year married fellow student Fang Xingao.
They went briefly to New York at the outbreak of the second world war but - already expecting twins, one of whom would become Hong Kong's chief secretary - went first to Shanghai, where the twins were born, then Hong Kong.
Fleeing the Japanese invasion soon afterwards, the family, with six children, returned to the mainland, where they spent a decade taking refuge in Guilin and Chongqing .