In 1943, Wu Chen Yen was transferred from the Department of Physical Education, where he had been studying, to the Department of Fine Arts of Central University, which had been relocated from Nanjing to Chongqing, Sichuan, due to the war against Japan. The Department of Fine Arts offered courses in oil painting, drawing, clay sculpture, Chinese painting, and theory, and many of the teachers were specialized in ink painting, calligraphy and Western painting. The successive chairmen of the department, Xu Beihong and Lu Si Bai, both graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris. Lu Si Bai taught oil painting, watercolor and drawing, and was very strict with his students, emphasizing the basics of training, precision in form and structure and mastery of light and color. Wu Chen Yen's still life is painted in watercolor, using close-up framing angles and a simple triangular geometric composition, with objects, tilted draperies and linear stripes, and repeating the basic triangular structure in terms of space and direction, so that the vision of the painting is cohesive and the overall center of gravity is stable. The spherical, cylindrical, and linear objects, under the bright light source of a single projection, reveal simple and elegant colors and rich layers of light and shadow.