Chang Wan-chuan was born in Tamsui, Taipei in 1909. In 1929, Chang entered the Western Painting Institution and became familiar with Hung Rui-lin and Chen De-wang. In 1931, Chang enrolled in Kawabata Art School and Hongo Painting Studies Classroom in Tokyo, Japan to study sketching. During his days in Japan, his artwork was influenced by the Japanese Fauvism painter Siotuki Touhou. The style became Chang’s Artwork description afterwards—wild colors, untamed strokes, the vibrating sensation, and stressing themes. In 1937, Chang and five others, including Hung Rui-lin and Chen De-wang, established the MOUVE Artists' Society. In 1948, Chang started teaching in Taipei Municipal Datong High School. In 1952 he joined Tai-yang Art Society. In 1954, Chang Wan-chuan established the Era Art Association with Chang Yi-shiung and others. The next year, after the third "Era Art Exhibition", the association suspended its activities for 18 years. Afterwards, Chang was no longer involved in any art groups. He plunged himself mostly into teaching art and his personal creativity. Chang Wan-chuan’s artwork was selected by “The Primary Art Exhibition of Tokyo,” “Shunyo-Kai Art Exhibition,” Japan, and selected as the “special selection” in the “Taiwan Governmental Fine Arts Exhibition.” Chang also taught in Xiamen Art College and National Taiwan College of Arts. Chang died in Taipei in 2003, at age 95.

Chang Wan-chuan inherited his style from Japanese Fauvism and Paris School and transferred them into a style featuring Taiwanese local color. He pioneered a new path of Taiwanese art. Chang often derived his themes from his relatives and friends who stayed close to him. One might call him a “daily life painter.” Besides recording his own memories, Chang’s paintings also encompass his love and longing for his family and friends. The work Family emphasizes on both quality and quantity sketch. The designing of colors is full of variations. The black and brown thick outlines make clear the characters of the artwork theme. The use of multiplicity of viewpoints and the heavy colors depictions fill the canvas with emotions therefore euphemistically tells the love for family and the felicity fully enjoyed from a family life.

Chang Wan-chuan studied painting in Tokyo. He was mainly influenced by the then fashionable Fauvism and Paris School style. Throughout his life Chang Wan-chuan devoted himself to creativity featuring deconstructions of the visual format, the multiplicity of color variations, and enhancement of visual impression. Chang was an energetic, carefree and straightforward person; he actively devoted himself to art communities. Unfortunately, he withdrew from all those art groups when he found he practiced a different faith. Eventually Chang became a “maverick” painter who did not belong to any art association or painting school. In 1977, Chang held his “European Travel Exhibition” which was the turning point for his art career and the forthcoming financial stability. The prosperity of Taiwan’s art gallery business in the 1980s has brought fame to Chang and his art was positively appreciated by many. In the 1990s, the prominence of Taiwanese local art had brought Chang Wan-chuan’s popularity and status to a new level. He had thus become an important figure in the Taiwanese art scene and in the realm of art collections. His fame and social status was at its height. In 2001, the president paid a visit to Chang’s household. In 2002, Taipei County Bureau of Cultural Affairs published Chang’s oral biography and listed the book as a reference to Taiwanese art history. Chang Wan-chuan remained a figure who resisted the system and who refused to be in to be in office. Chang insisted on his art creativity, not on fame or money throughout his life. Chang’s attitude made him qualified as the master of Taiwanese contemporary art history.