Two days ago, Tyrus rode in a car up the California freeways and arrived in San Francisco once again. CAAM supported the film with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. During those years, Lei also got more involved with the TYRUS documentary and helped fund it. The Walt Disney Family Museum borrowed it from the church for the Tyrus Wong art exhibit, “Water to Paper, Paint to Sky: The Art of Tyrus Wong,” which had already begun, in 2013, and added it to the exhibit.Īfter a month and a half at the Disney Family Museum, it went back into storage at the church for the next few years. It’s believed that a minister at the time, Reverend Tso Tim Taam, brought it up to San Francisco when he became a minister in San Francisco. The story goes that the caretaker of the church didn’t like the painting. The painting, one of Wong’s largest paintings, was originally a gift to the Chinese Congregational Church in Los Angeles. When the painting was taken out of storage for Wong to see, he confirmed that the painting was indeed one of his own after peering at the distinct ways the hands were drawn, finally solving the mystery. People who were present recall Wong, who was 103 years-old at the time, hiking up the steep streets of San Francisco Chinatown to the church. What are the chances it being the one that my father painted?” “I didn’t think at that point it was the same painting. The Walt Disney Family Museum held a retrospective exhibit of Tyrus Wong’s artwork in 2013, and the Wong family was in town from Los Angeles for the exhibit. “Because we were going up to San Francisco to go to the Walt Disney Family Museum, we thought, why don’t we check it out while we’re out there,” Kim Wong said.
They reached out to Wong’s daughter, Kim, who remembered that her father had mentioning a painting of his in a San Francisco church, and decided to take a look. Johnson saw the photo and suggested they reach out to Tyrus Wong, who was active in an Asian American artists’ association back in the 1930s and 40s, who would likely know the answer. Lei showed a photo of the piece to Mark Johnson, Professor of Art and Gallery Director at San Francisco State University. While it was indeed the painting Lei remembered, it was unsigned. She brought Lei to the church, where they found the painting gathering dust in a little used stairwell. An attendee, Lisa Lau, revealed a clue that would lead Lei to the missing painting. When he asked around, one of the church members said that they threw the large painting away during a remodel.ĭuring a talk at the Berkeley Chinese Community Church, Lei mentioned the painting to illustrate how people throw away things from the past that represent a part of our heritage. In his research, it was noted that Xu donated a painting to a Chinatown church, triggering his memory of the large Jesus painting he’d seen as a child. He had seen the original backdrop of the Great Star, signed by an artist named Xu Feng Bo. He struggled to figure out who painted the piece, believing that it could have been made by a Chinese immigrant who painted the backdrop at the Great Star Theater because of its massive canvas. What made it most intriguing and memorable was that it was a Chinese Jesus, Lei said.Īs Lei grew up, he heard that the painting had been discarded or lost. “It was quite Western, colorful, and it was huge, life size or bigger than life size,” Lei recalls of the nearly 80-inch-tall watercolor painting that integrates Western and Eastern styles. Lei was just about 8 years-old when he first saw a life size painting of Jesus at the Chinese United Methodist Church in San Francisco’s Chinatown. His story has been beautifully captured in TYRUS, a new documentary by Pamela Tom, which premieres in the Bay Area on Thursday, March 10 at CAAMFest 2016. Wong, the visionary behind the iconic look of Disney’s Bambi, has a robust and diverse portfolio ranging from Hollywood films like Rebel Without a Cause and Chinese brush painting on ceramics to Hallmark holiday cards and stunning kites.
Were it not for some everyday sleuthing and a bit of serendipity, a long-lost painting from 105-year-old pioneering artist Tyrus Wong would be forgotten in a closet of a San Francisco Chinatown church. Wong’s story and ongoing legacy has impacted people all over the world, including CAAM Board Member David Lei, who rediscovered Wong’s piece after first seeing it as a child.
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