Artist Fu Hong painted a portrait of Chinese literature teacher, researcher and translator Mabel Lee, and it has been honoured as a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize. Lee has been a staff at the University of Sydney’s Chinse Studies for 34 years and is known as one of Australia’s finest translators. Lee is currently an Adjunct Professor and her research deals with modern Chinese intellectual history and literature, with a particular focus on 2000 Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian and 1999 (Italian) Flaiano Poetry Prize winner Yang Lian. She was elected to the Academy in 2004.
With a friendship spanning 20 years, which started with a chance meet in Melbourne, Lee, tells the Australian Academy of the Humanities where the journey began in her friendship with Fu Hong:
‘I would always spend a leisurely day viewing his artworks and chatting endlessly with him in the leafy courtyard that overlooked a densely wooded valley,’
‘His artist partner, Echo, would intermittently join us to relax and enjoy the truly amazing meals and wines that Fu Hong always served.’
The portrait now hangs with 51 others at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as an Archibald Prize finalist, in this, their centenary year.
If you are in the area, please go and check it out!
Images via Australian Academy of Humanities
To read the full article, please click on: Academy Fellow, Mabel Lee, honoured and excited by Archibald Prize success