Jin Zhang (Chinese: 金章; pinyin: Jǐn Zhāng) (1884–1939) was a painter, calligrapher, and art instructor active during China's Republican era.

His openness to foreign ideas led to his children growing up alongside popular Western inventions like microscopy, phonography, and the camera.

[2] One of her younger brothers, Jin Shaoji, co-founded the Peking Laboratory of Natural History in 1925 with American Amadeus William Grabau.

[3] As they came from what was considered a wealthy family, Jin Zhang and her siblings were privately tutored throughout their childhoods in subjects like calligraphy, painting, and the Confucian classics.

[5] As a reflection of both her artistic talent and the respect she had earned from her family, Jin Zhang was asked to create the calligraphy for her grandfather's epitaph.

While he had not attended school from puberty to the age of twenty-five, he suddenly devoted his life to art and study in 1939 and eventually became a respected authored of numerous books on subjects like Chinese furniture and pigeon whistles.

[6] Jin Zhang and her three brothers returned to China in 1905 after receiving their educations in London, traveling first class aboard the SS Ivernia ocean liner.

The officials in Boston not only initially denied the Jin siblings entry, but they also deliberately humiliated them much to the anger of their friends and fellow passengers.

This sentiment was echoed in many of their interviews, for example: "It is rather exasperating to us to be detained there after all the other passengers have gone ashore...I can understand why the United States may desire to keep out Chinese labor from the country, but I do not see why it would discriminate against tourists and those who come merely in transit.

In many cities in China the middle classes of Chinamen are boycotting American goods, buying English or European products instead, because of the manner in which they are treated in this country.

In China, the incident was shared on posters, postcards, and pamphlets, including one titled Tonga shounue ji (A Record of Abuses Suffered by Our Compatriots).

Jin Zhang used her article to discuss women's education, philanthropy, and livelihoods, in addition to more specific topics like traditional foot-binding.

[1] Jin Zhang published a four volume manual on the art of painting fish titled Haoliang zhileji in 1922, and it was reprinted over sixty years later in 1986.

The book featured commentary from over dozen individuals including Zhu Ziqing, Shen Yinmo, Liu Yazi, Yu Pingbo, and Xu Shiying.

The pair were part of a group of artists active in the late Qing and Republican periods known as nüshi shuhuajia, or "female scholar-painters," who revitalized traditional styles of Chinese painting and calligraphy with more modern ideas.

[1] The Chinese Painting Research Society (CPRS) was established during a meeting of more than thirty artists held at the Shidazi temple in Beijing on 30 May 1920.

[1] Artwork by Jin Zhang is held by numerous private collectors as it regularly appears at art auctions in London, New York City, and Hong Kong.