Dora Fugh Lee: A Lifetime of Art

A Retrospective Art Exhibit at the Chinese American Museum DC - September 25 - February 26, 2022

This is the first complete retrospective exhibit of Dora Fugh Lee, a Washingtonian artist, born and classically trained in China, and influenced by her experiences in the U.S. and Europe.

When an artist is immersed in two different artistic cultures, the resulting art transcends philosophies, techniques, and materials. She retains the best qualities of each discipline and then creates something new and uniquely beautiful. This art is uniquely Dora Fugh Lee – painter, sculptor, and Chinese American.

Dora Fugh Lee’s name in Chinese is Fu Duoruo (傅鐸若). She was born in 1929 in Beijing into the Manchu Fuca (富察氏) clan.
Generations of high military officials, royalty, and artists are among Dora Lee’s family lineage, with bonds to both the East and West.

The Fu family’s ancestors include the first empress of the Qianlong Emperor, Empress Xiaoxianchun, Grand Secretary Fu Heng, and Prince Fu Kang’an of the Qing Dynasty. The spelling of their surname Fu was changed to “Fugh” by Dora Lee’s father in the 1920’s. 

At age four, Dora Lee was singled out as a promising artist by her grandfather, Fu Ruiqing (傅瑞卿). He served as a national Senator in the late Qing dynasty and in the early Nationalist
period of China’s history. She was the only grandchild allowed to sit with him as he practiced calligraphy and painting. At age 11, Dora became a student of Yan Shaoxing, a renowned master of figure painting. She studied Gongbi, a realistic portrait painting style.

Dora Lee attended an all-girls Catholic school in Beijing and studied directly under Zhao Mengzhu, a master of modern Chinese fine brushwork flower-and-bird painting. He was a member of the Hu She Painting Association, known as “the Cradle of Modern Chinese Painting.”

In 1949, the newly married Mrs. Lee and her husband Richard, left China and resided in Tokyo, Japan, for a time where she became a student of Pu Ru (溥儒、溥心 畲), the foremost literati painter of modern China and cousin of Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China.

After Dora Lee settled in Washington, DC, with her husband in 1957, she studied under the artist and sculptor Pietro Lazzari.  In the 1980’s, she taught traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy at the Smithsonian Institution and George Washington University.

Dora Lee earned over 50 awards in her career.  Today, her works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Asian Art (formerly the Freer and Sackler Galleries), the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the China Institute, the Pearl Buck Foundation, the National Cathedral, and the University of Virginia among other notable institutions.