The Shanghai Academy of Art: the school that gave the city its early 20th-century aesthetic

A naked woman stands on a sturdy lace-covered table, hands behind her back, head turned to the side, one knee raised, while a group of students flit their eyes between the Chinese model and the adjustable wooden mannequins surrounding her.

This scene was photographed in 1920, but not in any European salon. The picture was taken in a shikumen-style building in Shanghai, and it captured the first known life-drawing class using a nude model in China.

The Shanghai Academy of Art was a private school founded in 1912 by the artist Liu Haisu (born 1896), when he was aged just 16. By the age of 10, Liu had become an art prodigy, excelling in oil painting and traditional Chinese ink painting (guohua). In his early teens he was trained in orthodox landscape and flower painting by Qing dynasty master artist and calligrapher Wu Changshuo, at his studio in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

Liu believed traditional Chinese art was in stasis and that rejuvenating China’s fine arts required engaging with and assimilating foreign trends of the time. His academy would be co-educational, with entry open to those whose work satisfied the faculty’s critical eyes, and welcoming to international influences and teaching techniques not previously employed in China, such as his controversial nude life-drawing classes.

Based in the city’s French Concession, Liu’s academy had a certain protection from Chinese government control, despite the fine art establishment of the time accusing him of moral and cultural bankruptcy, of being an “artistic traitor”. Venturing outside Shanghai, Liu was arrested several times, and faced government calls for the school to be closed more than once, though these were resisted by the French authorities.