painting tranquil nature scenes and traditional art.

Yang Zhou, which faces Suzhou across the Yangtze River, was home to the "Eight Eccentrics" - the eight painters all with strong characters, proud and aloof, who refused to follow orthodoxy. They used freehand brushwork and broadened the horizon of flower-and-bird painting.

By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Shanghai, which gave birth to the Shanghai Painting School, had become the most prosperous commercial city and a gathering place for numerous painters. Following the spirit of the Eight Eccentrics of Yang Zhou, the Shanghai School played a vital role in the transition of Chinese traditional painting from a classical art form to a modern one.

The May 4th Movement of 1919, or the New Culture Movement, inspired the Chinese to learn from western art and introduce it to China. Many outstanding painters, led by Xu Beihong, emerged, whose paintings recognized a perfect merging of the merits of both Chinese and Western styles, absorbing western classicism, romanticism and impressionism. Other great painters of this period include Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong and Zhang Daqian.

Oil painting, a western art, was introduced to China in the 17th century and gained popularity in the early 20th century. In the 1980s Chinese oil painting boomed.

New Year Painting

Then came popular folk painting -- Chinese New Year pictures pinned up on doors, room walls and windows on the Chinese New Year to invite heavenly blessings and ward off disasters and evil spirits - which dates back to the Qin and Han dynasties. Thanks to the invention of block printing, folk painting became popular in the Song Dynasty and reached its zenith of sophistication in the Qing. Woodcuts have become increasingly diverse in style, variety, theme and artistic form since the early 1980s. Classification of Chinese Traditional Painting

Four treasures of the study

Traditional Chinese painting has its special materials and tools, consisting of brushes, ink and pigments, xuan paper, silk and various kinds of ink slabs. Based on different classification standards, Chinese traditional painting can be divided into several