Yu Shaosong

Available sources place Yu Shaosong's birth in Guangzhou in the early 1880s, with an authority record derived from the Chinese Biographical Database giving 1883 and two auction and exhibition sources giving 1882. No source in the available research gives an exact day or month of birth, so this profile treats the year as 1882 to 1883 rather than a fixed date. The same authority record indicates he studied at Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan, with his time there ending around 1910, though no degree, field of study, or start date is documented.

He was active as a painter through the final years of the Qing dynasty and into the Republic of China, and is grouped in later exhibition and auction materials with painters of that same cohort. He died in 1949. No source available to this profile documents an exact death date, a place of death, or the circumstances of his death, and those details should be treated as undocumented rather than assumed.

Independent critical commentary specifically about Yu Shaosong could not be located, and no verbatim quotation from a named critic in a major outlet is available to cite here. The strongest available context is a China 2000 Fine Art exhibition text that lists "Yu Shaosong (1882-1949)" alongside other early twentieth-century Chinese painters, including figures such as Qi Baishi and Huang Binhong, without further detail on the exhibition's venue, year, or curatorial framing. This places him within that broader cohort of Republican-era Chinese painters, but it does not amount to a documented critical reputation of his own, and this profile does not claim one.

Yu Shaosong's clearest documented point of market presence is a lot at Christie's titled "Yu Shaosong (1882-1949) / Yu Zicai (1915-1992) / Wu Cikan (1890-1966)," part of the online sale "Dawn of Spring: Chinese Paintings Online." That listing confirms his work has been catalogued and offered by a major international auction house, but the available sources do not include a hammer price, currency, sale location, or exact sale date for the lot. No other confirmed sale, at any price level, could be located, so this profile does not report an all-time auction record. Any figure that circulates for this artist without a matching work title, date, and house should be treated with caution until it can be traced to a primary auction record.

Documentation on Yu Shaosong is thin relative to most artists on this platform, and several basic facts, including his exact birth year, birth date, death date, and place of death, are not resolved in the available sources. There is no catalogue raisonne, no identified gallery or estate representation, and no confirmed museum collection holding his work. The one clear market touchpoint is a grouped lot at Christie's, without a confirmed price or sale location. Given the thin record and the possibility of romanization variants for his name (Yu Shao-sung, Yu Shaosung, Yu Shao Song), collectors should treat any specific price claim, attribution, or provenance chain for this artist as requiring independent, primary-source verification before reliance.