Pu Xuezhai was a noted painter (see, e.g., on the Oberlin museum website) as well as qin player, but there is little biographical information available in English. There is also some confusion about his surname in that he is often called 傅雪齋 Fu Xuezhai (an English example is the well-known UNESCO recording called A Musical Anthology of the Orient 32, 1985). Chinese writings may use either Pu Xuezhai or Fu Xuezhai (溥伒 Pu Jin is also common but 傅伒 Fu Jin less so), but I have not yet found an explanation of when or why Fu got started as a substitute for Pu. Because as a surname Pu is rare but Fu is quite common, perhaps this is due to simple confusion. Or perhaps at some time, as when Puyi allowed the Japanese to make him emperor of Manchuria from 1934 to 1945, it became politically expedient for Pu Xuezhai to change his surname from Pu to Fu. In any case, it now seems most common to go back to his original surname, Pu.
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