Zhang Chongren
| Zhang Chongren | |
|---|---|
| Native name | simplified Chinese: 张充仁; traditional Chinese: 張充仁; pinyin: Zhāng Chōngrén; Wade–Giles: Chang Ch'ung-jen |
| Born |
27 September 1907 Xujiahui, Shanghai, China |
| Died | 8 October 1998 (aged 91) Nogent-sur-Marne, France |
Zhang Chongren (27 September 1907 – 8 October 1998), also known as Chang Chong-jen, was a Chinese artist and sculptor best remembered in Europe as the friend of Hergé, the Belgian cartoonist and creator of The Adventures of Tintin. The two met when Zhang was an art student in Brussels.
Zhang was born the son of a gardener in 1907 in Xujiahui (Ziccawei), then a suburb of Shanghai, China. The young Zhang lost both his parents at an early age and grew up in the French Jesuit orphanage of Tou-Se-we (now Tushanwan) where he entered at the age of seven, and where he learned French. He then entered the Art School of the orphanage, where he learned to draw, and was systematically educated in Western art. After finishing school in 1928, Zhang worked with design for the film industry and at a local newspaper. In 1931, he left China for the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium.
Hergé's early albums of The Adventures of Tintin were highly dependent on stereotypes for comedic effect. These included evil Russian Bolsheviks, lazy and dumb black Africans, and an America of gangsters, cowboys, and Indians.
At the close of the newspaper run of Cigars of the Pharaoh, Hergé had mentioned that Tintin's next adventure (The Blue Lotus) would bring him to China. Father Gosset, the chaplain to the Chinese students at the University of Leuven, wrote to Hergé urging him to be sensitive about what he wrote about China. Hergé agreed, and in the spring of 1934 Gosset introduced him to Zhang Chongren. The two young artists quickly became close friends, and Zhang introduced Hergé to Chinese history, culture, and the techniques of Chinese art. As a result of this experience Hergé would strive, in The Blue Lotus and subsequent Tintin adventures, to be meticulously accurate in depicting the places Tintin visited.
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