[1] His family owned one of the largest silk-weaving mills in Sichuan, the Dehe Silk Factory, which was managed by Sanyu's eldest brother Chang Junmin.
Thirty-seven years older than Sanyu, Junmin doted on his younger brother and, recognizing his interest and talent in art, spared little to support and encourage all his artistic endeavors.
Growing up in Nanchong, approximately 300 kilometres from Chengdu, Sanyu was most probably unaffected by the discontent that was brewing in the major cities of China at this time.
Crippled by these dual tensions, compounded by the ineffectiveness of antiquated social and political systems, China was rendered impotent, forcing many to reassess the predicament of their torn nation.
The unacceptable terms of the Treaty of Versailles forced a counter-movement that gained momentum through student organizations across the country, culminating in the historic May Fourth Incident.
[2] Xu and Jiang, who had arrived a year before Sanyu, were already finding life in the City of Light too costly for their meager income and decided to move to Berlin where living was cheaper.
Only two works by Sanyu, Peonies and Landscape with Willow Trees, both painted in traditional brush and ink style, survive, further attesting to the lack of artistic activity during this period.
While most of the Chinese art students aspired to enroll in the esteemed École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Sanyu preferred the less academic environment of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
One can imagine the excitement the young Sanyu must have felt being in a studio where nude models, forbidden at home, posed at arm's reach.
Sanyu’s early works in Paris comprise exclusively ink and pencil drawings of nudes and figures, of which over 2000 examples survive today.
The trained calligraphic stroke, with its varying innuendos, afforded Sanyu a unique chance to delineate the human body, not so much in terms of its anatomy but more as a means of expressing the beauty and sensitivity of a flowing line.
Sanyu, along with Xu Beihong, Yan Wenliang, Lin Fengmian and Liu Haisu (collectively, the Four Great Academy Presidents) are widely known as the most prominent first-generation Chinese oil-painters who studied in France in the early 1900s.
Accustomed to his brother's support, he was confident that money coming from home would continue, but the increasingly long intervals between allowances already anticipate the financial difficulties about to beset Sanyu.
In 1929, a year after his marriage, Sanyu met Henri-Pierre Roché, an astute and dynamic art collector and dealer better known as the author of Jules et Jim and Les deux anglaises et le continent.
Roché, who had a keen interest in discovering talent, with artists like Marie Laurencin, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, and Constantin Brâncuși to his credit, saw promise in Sanyu and agreed to act as his dealer.
Sanyu's constant complaining and demands for money turned him into more of a financial and emotional liability than an artistic asset and in 1932, Roché decided to drop the relationship.
Drypoint worked particularly well for Sanyu, the small size of the plates lent an intimacy with the viewer and the fine lines conveyed the essence of his simplicity and he applied it skillfully and effectively to his nudes.
Both Picasso and Matisse favored etching and drypoint during this period and Sanyu was undoubtedly influenced by these masters' prolific printmaking activities.
Disillusioned, Sanyu decided to return to Paris leaving all his paintings to Frank as a way of repaying him for supporting him during his two-year stay in New York.
In 1997, Frank sold these paintings and donated the proceeds to establish the Sanyu Scholarship Fund at Yale University to support Chinese students of art.
In Europe, the painful memories of the First World War led to a widespread shift in philosophies and attitudes on existence: people were desperate to enjoy the pleasures of the present, without concern for the future.
In the late 1920s, French scholar and collector Henri-Pierre Roché began to take a strong interest in Sanyu's paintings, acquiring many of the artist's works for his personal collection.
While Roche collected numerous works by major Fauvist and Cubist artists, he often spoke of his admiration for Sanyu's exceptional creative gift.
On 12 August 1966, Hau Shing Kang, a Chinese friend who owned a restaurant in Paris, went to visit Sanyu at his studio at 28 rue de la Sablière.
Upon forcing the door open, they smelled a strong gaseous odor and when they went up to Sanyu's loft bedroom, they found him dead, lying in his bed with a book propped against his chest.