Fong was born in Shanghai in 1930. As a child he studied under the calligrapher Li Jian. Fong held his personal calligraphy exhibition at the age of 10 and was acclaimed as a prodigy. He enrolled at Shanghai Jiao Tong University before moving to the United States to study at Princeton University in 1948. At Princeton Fong studied under Kurt Weitzmann and George Rowley, and earned his B.A. in European history and M.F.A. in medieval art history. In 1954, he joined the faculty of Princeton while still studying for his Ph.D., which he received in 1958. His Ph.D. dissertation on the history of Chinese art was published by the Freer Gallery of Art as The Lohans and a Bridge to Heaven.
Career
In 1959, Wen Fong and Frederick W. Mote co-founded the first doctoral program in Chinese art and archaeology in the United States, which was expanded to include Japan in 1962. From 1970 to 1973, he served as Chair of Princeton's Department of Art and Archaeology. He was a curator at the Art Museum of Princeton University for Asian art, and helped build the John B. Elliott Collection of Chinese Calligraphy, considered one of the best outside of China. In 1971, he was named Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art History. He retired from Princeton in 1999, after a 45-year career. He subsequently taught at Tsinghua University from 2004 to 2007 and Zhejiang University from 2009 to 2012. From 1971 to 2000, Fong also served as a special consultant, and later consultative chairman, for Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Met, he had an influential debate with art historian James Cahill over the authenticity of The Riverbank, a famous 10th-century painting attributed to the Southern Tang master Dong Yuan. It was purchased and donated to the museum by the financier Oscar Tang, Fong's brother-in-law. Cahill made an explosive argument that the painting was a fake created by the 20th-century master painter and forger Zhang Daqian, while Fong disagreed with his finding. The dispute remains unresolved. Despite their disagreement, Cahill made a presentation praising Fong's scholarship and friendship at a 2006 Princeton symposium held in Fong's honor. Fong also served as Corresponding Research Fellow at the Institute of History and Philology of Academia Sinica in Taiwan and was elected as an academician of Academia Sinica in 1992.
Streams and Mountains without End: A Northern Sung Handscroll and Its Significance in the History of Early Chinese Painting, co-authored with Sherman E. Lee.
The Lohans and a Bridge to Heaven.
Summer Mountains: The Timeless Landscape.
Returning Home: Tao-chi’s Album of Landscapes and Flowers.
Images of the Mind: Selections from the Edward L. Elliot Family and John B. Elliot Collections of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting at the Art Museum, Princeton University.
Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th–14th Century.
The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliot Collection, co-authored with Robert E. Harrist, Jr., et al..
Along the Riverbank: Chinese Paintings from the C. C. Wang Family Collection.
Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
