Pan Zhenyong

Pan Zhenyong was born in 1852 into a family of painters in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China, and is recorded as having died in 1921. Both dates come from a single Christie's catalogue note and have not been independently corroborated in the available research, so they should be treated as the best available figures rather than as fully confirmed.

He trained under Dai Yiheng (1826 to 1891), described in the Christie's source as a well-known painter from Qiantang, and he specialized in painting female figures, a long-established subject in Chinese figure painting. No formal school, academy, or degree is documented for him.

At the start of the Republic of China period, Pan Zhenyong and his brother Pan Zhenjie worked with the painter Gao Yong (1850 to 1921) to establish the Yuyuan Painting and Calligraphy Charitable Organization in Shanghai. Beyond this organizational role and his training under Dai Yiheng, no further exhibition history, institutional affiliation, or later-life biographical detail could be confirmed in the available research.

No exact, attributable critic quotations specifically about Pan Zhenyong could be located in the available research; critical commentary that surfaced under similar names belongs to other artists, including Pan Yuliang, and is not repeated here. The strongest documented indicator of his standing within his own period is his organizational role, alongside Gao Yong and his brother Pan Zhenjie, in founding the Yuyuan Painting and Calligraphy Charitable Organization in Shanghai, which situates him within the network of traditional ink painters active in the city at the start of the Republic. No museum collection holdings, gallery representation, or later critical reassessment of his work could be confirmed.

At least three auction lots attributed to Pan Zhenyong were located in the online catalogue of Xiling Yinshe Auction Co. in Hangzhou, China. The highest realized price found is for a painting titled "Beauty," which sold for RMB 52,800 including commission against an estimate of RMB 16,000 to 20,000. Two further lots in the same catalogue realized RMB 38,500 and RMB 16,500 including commission, but their titles are not given in the accessible listing. None of the three lots shows an exact sale date, so a confirmed sale date, a reliable local-currency-to-USD conversion, and confirmation that RMB 52,800 is the artist's true auction high cannot be established here. No other auction house results, price trend, or ranking data for the artist could be identified.

The documentary record on Pan Zhenyong available to this research is unusually thin. His birth and death years rest on a single auction-house catalogue note rather than on multiple corroborating sources, his confirmed auction results lack exact sale dates and cannot be confirmed as his true auction high, and no catalogue raisonne, current gallery representation, or museum collection holding could be confirmed. Anyone considering a work attributed to this artist should treat provenance and attribution research as the first step, and should expect to rely on Chinese-language auction archives and connoisseurship rather than on any English-language reference currently available.