Background
Sun was born in Shou County, Anhui province in 1912 to educated and middle class parents. Her mother ran a girl"s school and her father was a secretary to Sun Chuanfang and he was later a professor
孙多慈
Sun was born in Shou County, Anhui province in 1912 to educated and middle class parents. Her mother ran a girl"s school and her father was a secretary to Sun Chuanfang and he was later a professor
Sun had originally intended to study literature after completed her schooling at Anqing Girls School but she was unsuccessful at entering National Central University.
She first came to attention when she had an affair with the painter Xu Beihong. One of her pieces has sold at auction for more than $100,000. Her original name was Sun Yunjun (Chinese: 孙韵君).
She did visit the university to study painting where she took lessons from Xu Beihong.
The art professor with a partner and family regarded Sun as a "painter of genius". He admired her work and invited her to pose for paintings.
Xu was now a Professor of Art at National Central University. Sun became a full-time student with Xu Beihong in 1931 and their established affair was well known.
There were complaints about the extra attention that she got from her teacher and of how they both ignored the rules concerning male visitors to the university"s female dormitory.
However she continued to attend lectures whilst Xu Beihong travelled abroad in January 1933. After Xu returned he and Sun both joined sketching trips to Huangshan, but their brash behaviour created gossip. The controversy resulted in Sun leaving the university, but Xu Beihong did not leave his family.
Sun returned to her old school and began teaching but without her degree.
Xu and his partner finally agreed privately to separate in 1935. Sun published her first book Sun Duoci Sketches in 1936.
The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War necessitated in 1938 that Sun and her family should move to Changsha and here she again met Xu. Xu arranged for her whole family to move to Guilin where she worked as a civil servant.
Xu sent a go-between to ask her father for permission to marry.
Her father refused and much to Sun"s later regret she decided to accede to her father"s wishes. Sun and her family moved again to Lishui, Zhejiang province, where the 26-year-old Sun entered into an unhappy marriage with the much older and unfaithful provincial education minister Xu Shaodi. Sun taught at Zhejiang College of Artist
Sun continued to correspond with her former lover and Xu Beihong was said to have memorised poems that he sent her.
She later moved to the United States, where she heard of Xu Beihong"s death in 1953. Sun mourned his death for three years.
She died in Los Angeles in March 1975 from cancer. Her work ""Landscape.
Lady" sold at auction for over $110,000 in 2014.