For most of the time since mid-October, oil painter Jiang Guofang has locked himself at home, sweating away at new pieces in a secluded courtyard in the small county town of Yanjiao, on the east border between Beijing and Hebei Province.

In his spacious studio, visitors may find some of the artist's favorite paintings depicting pretty women and young men in ancient costumes against the backdrop of the Forbidden City.

Next to the studio, his house appears to be a small art gallery, filled with numerous books, catalogues, oil paintings, vintage photos of old China particularly those about life in the Qing Court as well as Chinese and foreign artifacts.

"Many of my previous works are not with me anymore, so I have to churn out more for the next exhibition," said Jiang, with the slight resignation of a mother speaking of her beloved children far away from her.

For years, the 54-year-old artist has been hailed by critics and collectors as "the painter of the Forbidden City" for his distinctive oil painting series depicting the former imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) of ancient China.

The upcoming exhibition is different from the one he held last September in the Forbidden City, and the latest one at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, Italy between July and early October.

Starting next May, Jiang will launch his five-year worldwide exhibition tour that is expected to kick off at Palermo Museum and then move to Taormina Museum, both in Sicily, Italy, before going on to the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, France, the Museo Diocesano in Barcelona, Spain, and to many more art museums in Europe and North America.

"It is my turn to divert the world's attention to the ever-lasting grandeur and glory of the Forbidden City," said the ambitious artist.

"With my paintings, I intend to make the world heritage better understood and appreciated not only by Chinese today but also by people from all over the world."

Early experiences

However, it has taken Jiang decades of hard work to capture ancient Chinese royal court life by applying the Western fine art techniques.

"Jiang's success is a rare example," Manfred Schoeni, owner of Hong Kong-based Schoeni Gallery and a big fan of Jiang's oil works, had once said. "It was only after unremitting efforts and countless setbacks that he managed to step foot on the road to success."

In 1951, Jiang was born in a carpenter's family in Huoshan Village, Jinxian County, in south China's Jiangxi Province. He is the fourth child among eight siblings. When he was three, his family moved to provincial capital Nanchang, where Jiang developed a keen interest in art at an early age.

"My family members have never expected me to become an artist," recalled Jiang, who grew up in a family which had no ties whatsoever with art, yet made a name for himself in painting while still young.

Jiang received incomplete and basic training in art from his neighbors and middle school teachers during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

At 16, Jiang, a junior high dropout, was enlisted in the army and spent four years in South China's Fujian Province before working for a local motor manufacturing factory in Nanchang.

During that period, Jiang continued to learn about painting.

In 1974, he was enrolled in the Central Academy of Fine Arts where he was exposed to different genres of both Chinese and Western art. But Jiang's favorite was the art of oil painting.

In 1988, Jiang graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and started teaching there before he was transferred to the Central Academy of Drama to be a professor, embarking on his road of professional painting.

Obsession with imperial palace

The reason Jiang was preoccupied in creating works on the Forbidden City might be attributed to the year 1974, when he came to Beijing and saw with his own eyes the Forbidden City for the first time in his life.

Once he stepped inside the Forbidden City, he was spellbound by its magnificent view and couldn't help wondering what kind of people once lived there.

This is the prime driving force that pushed him to study the imperial culture and life, Jiang said.

"My love of the traditional culture naturally breeds an artistic urge to pursue the oil painting art of the Forbidden City," Jiang said. "The Forbidden City often haunts me in my dreams," Jiang said.

"The Forbidden City is an epitome of brilliant Chinese civilization. As a country with more than 2,000 years of feudal history, the imperial culture spearheaded the development of the Chinese civilization."

In 1405, Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty moved the capital of the feudal Chinese empire from East China's Nanjing to Beijing; two years later, between 1407 and 1420, began the building of this monumental palace that ended up becoming a small city, consisting of 9,000-odd halls, and covering an area of at least 5 square kilometers.

The complex, constructed and reconstructed by the feudal dynasties only a few hundreds years ago, is a perfect embodiment of millennia-old ancient Chinese civilization and Chinese culture, Jiang said.

New approach to history

With Jiang's artistic strokes, he painted many court ladies in the settings of the Forbidden City, from the empresses and princesses to concubines and courtesans.

They are women of aristocracy and antiquity, with an elegance that is slightly affected and almost alienating, and are also the object of Jiang's admiration.

"These women I paint represent a kind of classical aesthetic. There's nostalgia about them, one that is not instantly overwhelming but that will come back and haunt you," Jiang said.

When 33 of his works on the Forbidden City were shown as a Sino-Italian cultural exchange event in Rome months ago, Jiang was highly praised by the local visitors and critics alike.

His style appears to have drawn fully from the artistic tradition of the 17th Century Flemish Renaissance maestros such as Jan van Eyck (1385-1441).

And he has portrayed "the spirit of imperial Chinese tradition," observed Italian art critic Roberto Del Signore, after viewing Jiang's solo exhibition in Rome.

His works "can initially create, in the heart of the viewers, an alienating effect linked to the attempt to define a language in which the Eastern and Western cultures can merge harmoniously," Signore added.

Many Italians said that they know about the Forbidden City in Beijing only through director Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 movie The Last Emperor, which portrays the ill-fated monarch Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi of a declining Qing Dynasty.

"The viewers asked me a lot of interesting questions, such as who those people in my paintings are, whether they are my family members, and whether some of these figures are still alive and can be seen if they travel to see the Forbidden City in Beijing," Jiang recalled with a smile.

"Most of my portrayed figures are fictional," Jiang admitted.

He created these images and their settings based partly on historical documents, old photos, and partly based on his imagination and on-site observations of the royal palace.

Sometimes, Jiang even employs his family members and friends as models for the figures in his paintings.

"This approach gives me much freedom in artistic creation. It also allows me to realize my own aesthetic pursuit," he said. And that may explain why some Chinese art critics have labeled Jiang's works as "New Historical Paintings."

"The painter has never chosen historical events or figures in the real sense as his topics, but Jiang did more than merely 'illustrating' history," commented Zhao Li, vice-dean of the Art History Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts.

"Through the lofty spatial structures and exquisite details, as well as painstaking portrayal of main figures, he created scenes of 'historical dramas' with the painter himself acting as the director, producing tense situations and acute spiritual confrontations," Zhao said.

In still more of Jiang's paintings, women, the central focus, were rendered as confident, beautiful, kind and healthy, with all qualities and features of modern Chinese ladies, a sharp contrast to the classic insipidness of sickly and weak women often featured in ancient Chinese literature, wrote Zhao in a catalogue of Jiang's paintings.

"This unique treatment more clearly reflects Jiang's historical view, as well as his definition of historical paintings: A painter must not be bound by history when depicting history. The painter must be able to stand aloof from historical situations so as to observe and present eternal themes of humanity," concluded Zhao.

Striving for perfection

For years, Jiang has painted similar scenes in different oil works, as he is always trying to enhance their strength by adjusting the compositions, adding some details, or applying some new techniques to certain parts of the images.

To achieve desired effects, Jiang often takes a craftsman's approach to his paintings.

"For instance, over a decade, I have painted several works of similar themes, such as 'Palace Gate' and 'Son of Heaven.' But none of them resembles each other. Because each time I did my job, I would apply some new ideas and new techniques to it.

"The traditional Chinese painting aesthetics play a great role in my own creations. And partly because of that, I believe no Western oil painters can do the same as I have been doing in depicting the Forbidden City," Jiang said.

"My painting is aimed at a 'finished' finish, near perfection. It's deliberate and repeatedly worked on, rather than improvised."

When asked about whether he will continue to dwell on the subject matter of the Forbidden City for his future artistic creations, Jiang said "Yes, of course," with great confidence.

"I do not remember how many times I have paid homage to the Forbidden City over the years. But every time I go, the centuries-old palace can always give me inspiration," he said.

(China Daily December 9, 2005)