Au Ho-nien, master of Chinese painting, felt too hungry to go on after lecturing for two hours without having had his breakfast at the University of Chinese Culture in Taipei.

So he decided to draw something edible.

With ink, water and paper he created in one hour a cute, short, whiskered man selling freshly baked shao bing (a special kind of Chinese pancake).

Beside the man, in graceful calligraphy, Au wrote a poem describing his "hunger, coldness and yearning for a hot cake."

Like this painting, titled "Wu Dalang selling pancakes," Au's works now on show at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) reveal to visitors a wise, cheerful and easily accessible artist, not at all like the ink paintings of some other artists which seem too lofty to comprehend.

The review exhibition at NAMOC in Beijing, which Au launched to celebrate his 70th birthday, includes 112 representational landscapes, flower and bird paintings, figure paintings and calligraphy that he created over a span of 50 years.

Au enjoys his life-long flirtation with ink and water. The delicate patterns and balances between light and shade convey a liveliness, elegance and sublimity, remarked Yang Lizhou, curator of the museum.

Yang said it is the tradition of Lingnan School artists (including Au) to embrace the contemporary in aesthetic taste and to shuck off hackneyed styles and subject matter that have fettered Chinese painting for centuries.

The exhibition is the second major showing of Lingnan School art at the museum since re-opening after its refurbishment last year.

The first, held last November, featured works of the school's master painter Fang Kending (1901-75).

Fang, a student of the school's founder Gao Jianfu (1879-1951), is internationally known as the leader in the reform of Chinese figure painting, which started in the 1930s, ahead of even Xu Beihong (1895-1953) and Jiang Zhaohe (1904-86).

Born in 1935 in south China's Guangdong Province, Au is the representative of a later generation of Lingnan School artists than Fang.

The school, as the name implies (Lingnan means "south of the mountains"), has its roots in the south of the country, in Guangdong, especially in the provincial capital Guangzhou.

It established itself as one of the three major schools in the tide of reform in Chinese painting at the beginning of the 20th century, the other two being the Beijing-Tianjin School and the Shanghai School.

At a time when traditional Chinese painting had almost been driven into a dead end by its 800-year-old emphasis on an aloofness towards worldly affairs, Gao Jianfu (1879-1951), Gao Qifeng (1889-1933) and Chen Shuren (1884-1948), co-founded the Lingnan School.

Since the three masters, generations of the school's artists, with a youthful passion and boldness, have been "experimenting with the problem of finding an East-West synthesis in painting and developing a consistent solution," remarked renowned artist Fu Baoshi (1904-65).

"Whatever makes a moving, effective picture, we will adopt. We seek to renovate, to create and recreate constantly. We hope that the day will come when people will understand the true nature of the Lingnan School," said Au.

"A school should never be defined by certain fixed techniques. Our school is defined by an idea for which the founders were constantly criticized by their contemporaries, and by which their followers have been endowed with the courage to create," he added.

Au has been widely recognized as the leader of his generation of the school's artists. He was student of artist Zhao Shao'ang (1905-98), and is the Huagang Chair Professor of Art at the University of Chinese Culture in Taipei.

His works have been prized since the 1950s by public and private collectors around the world, including the British Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art in California, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Musee Cernuschi in Paris. He has also held solo shows at more than 10 art museums of world importance.

Easily recognizable elements of Au's style include broken textural strokes and the dry rubbing effect of a partially dry brush, which are harmonized with the techniques of water and pigment infusion.

Au likes to apply ink tones and color washes directly while sparing the use of outline, thus achieving an emphasis on dimension and distance.

He says, painting is "just one of the pleasures that one seeks from life."

He is also a poet in both Chinese and English, and a calligrapher and connoisseur of Chinese arts.

A piece on show titled "Yuping Peak of Huangshan Mountain" illustrates how Au takes pleasure in his art.

It snowed in 2000 on the mountain where Au had gone on a sketching tour, and he set down the scene on a fan he had with him.

"Snowflakes fell onto the fan and diffused the fresh ink, creating a delicate scent. It was one of the most lovely and memorable moments of my life," he said.

Once a week for the past 30 years Au has driven to Yangming Mountain in Taipei, where his university lies.

"At dusk I drive down the mountain towards the Danshui River at its foot. I have drawn this familiar scene more than 20 times, but it seems to be impossible to capture the spirit of the scene on paper," he said.

(China Daily March 22, 2004)