Pu Xin-yu (1896-1963), a descendant of the ruling Manchu Aisin-Gioro clan, was given the name Pu Ru at birth and took the courtesy name Xin-yu after coming of age. Later in life he used Pu as his surname and the professional name Xishan Yishi (西山逸士, Hermit of the Western Hills). Pu's great-grandfather was the Manchu Qing emperor Daoguang and his grandfather was the Qing statesman Yixin, also known as Prince Gong of the Aisin-Gioro clan.

As a child of the imperial household, Pu from an early age received a comprehensive education in traditional Chinese culture, studying calligraphy from the age of four, the classics from six, classical poetry from nine and classical literature from the age of 12. His firm grounding in the arts and literature earned him the name shentong (神童, divine child).

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Pu went with his mother to live in seclusion in Jietai Temple in the Western Hills just outside of Beijing, where he had access to the temple's impressive collection of calligraphic masterpieces. With this access, he was able to study the works of the “four Wangs of the early Qing” — Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Hui and Wang Yuanqi — and then later the works of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui of the Southern Song Dynasty, as well as landscapes from the Zhe school of the Ming Dynasty. Despite lacking a teacher, he was able to rely on his firm foundation in the arts and literature, his own keen intellect and sheer hard work to become a skilled landscape painter, specializing in the style of the Northern School.

By the mid 1920s, Pu had already made a name for himself in painting circles in Beijing by joining activities held by various painting associations, including the Xuannan Painting Society, the Chinese Painting Research Institute, the Songfeng Painting Association and the Hu She Society.

From the 1930s onward he became associated with the artist Chang Tai-chien, encapsulated in the phrase nanzhang beipu (南張北溥, “Chang of the Southern School; Pu of the Northern School”). Despite the saying, both painters were adept at both styles and were instrumental in transforming traditional painting against the backdrop of turbulent times.

After relocating to Taiwan, Pu taught in the Fine Arts Department of the Taiwan Provincial College of Education National (now National Taiwan Normal University). He and Chang then received a new moniker along with fellow artist Huang Chun-pi: the duhai sanjia (渡海三家) or the “three families from overseas.”

An erudite scholar, Pu worked on a wide range of topics, including the history of the classics, poetry, literary collections and treatises on painting and calligraphy. His published work Hanyutang Hualun (寒玉堂畫論, “On the Paintings in Hanyu Hall”) won the first Ministry of Education Fine Arts Award.

Pu was also an accomplished calligrapher, starting his studies with seal and clerical script before moving on to northern stele calligraphy, orthodox standard script and then cursive script, although he was always better known for his paintings. In his own telling, Pu said that he started with the classics, then moved on to calligraphy before learning painting, with calligraphic brush skills informing his painting technique. To Pu, the foundation of his creative impulse was derived from the ancient texts, poetry and calligraphy. When painting, he pursued the literati aesthetic in which poetry, calligraphy and painting complement each other to form a single whole. In his role as a representative of literati painting in the modern era, Pu's influence cannot be understated.

Pu retained his great love for art through the tumultuous times in which he lived. Taking the ancients as his teachers, he inherited the styles of the Southern Song and the northern schools of painting, adopting their vigorous brushwork. He later incorporated different styles into his work, transforming the old by investing contemporary elements. In this way he developed his own unique style of handling the brush, giving his work new meaning and innovating a style that was at once beautiful and elegant.

In addition to landscapes, Pu also excelled in portraying other traditional subjects of Chinese painting, including birds and flowers, figures and animals. His bird-and-flower paintings were initially influenced by the Song Dynasty academic style with its fine brushwork, while his figurative paintings often depicted elegant, graceful women and somber depictions of the bodhisattva Guanyin. However, his humor was also on full display in his renderings of the mythological Zhong Kui and demons, as the lively horses and apes in his animal paintings seem to jump from the paper.

Pu was a well-rounded painter, a master of a wide range of themes and an outstanding poet and calligrapher. He was also prolific, and is acknowledged as the “last literati painter of the 20th century.”