After the Opium War, exchanges between China and foreign countries became more frequent than before. Western religious paintings and commercial paintings have entered China more and more, and the influence of western paintings on China's paintings is more significant than before. China painters who really mastered the techniques of western painting did not appear until the end of 19. During the Tongzhi period, European missionaries set up an orphanage in Tushanwan, Shanghai, and taught all kinds of skills to adopted orphans, among which the painting gallery taught western painting techniques. After the orphans grew up and were discharged from the hospital, they also brought oil painting techniques to the society. Zhou Xiang, Zhang Yuguang and Xu Yongqing, who were active in Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, all came from Tushanwan Orphanage Gallery. At the same time, some China literati went to European countries to witness the exquisite works of western European painters. Xue Fucheng's oil painting concept is widely read in Paris, and Kang Youwei's Travels of Italy gives a high evaluation to Italian Renaissance painting. Through their beautiful poems, China intellectuals first learned another kind of painting which is completely different from the traditional painting in China.
1902, the Qing court promulgated school rules and adopted the day system. 1905, the imperial examination system was abolished, and both Nanjing Liangjiang Normal School and Baoding Beiyang Normal School offered painting manual classes, oil painting classes and hired foreign teachers to teach. From 65438 to 0909, Glory founded Chinese and Western art schools and set up painting workshops to teach western painting techniques. Wu, Liu Haisu and Zhang studied painting here. This is the beginning of China's study of western art education. At the same time, many painting learners who don't have the opportunity to receive training and lack oil painting materials often start with oil painting, and use various substitutes for pigments and oils to draw oil paintings that are basically traditional in China. It was not until young people who went abroad to study painting returned to China one after another that this situation was changed.
Li Tiefu, the earliest Guangdong painter who went abroad to study oil painting from the beginning of 20th century to the end of 1940s, 1887 went to the United States to work in J.S. placer gold mine, and supported Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary activities with his prize money and the proceeds from painting sales. Li Shutong, who first studied painting in Japan, returned to China in 19 10, and later worked as an art teacher in Tianjin, Hangzhou and Nanjing. He initiated plaster model and human sketch, and organized a foreign painting research society at school. After the Revolution of 1911, more and more people went abroad to study painting, mainly to Europe, America and Japan. Earlier, Li, Feng, Wu Fating, Li Chaoshi and others went to Europe to paint aesthetics, and later, Lin Fengmian, Xu Beihong, Pan, Zhou Bichu, Pang Xun, Chang Shuhong, Wu Zuoren, Tang Yihe, Zhou Fangbai and Wu Dayu. Later, there were Wang Yuezhi, Xu Dungu, Hu Gentian, Yu, Wang Jiyuan, Xu Xingzhi, Ni Yide and Wei. In 1940s, Wu Guanzhong, Liu Wenqing and others went to France to study painting.
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism have already gained a solid position in the painting circle when China students first arrived in Western Europe. Although academic classicism has been supported, its influence has declined. In Japan, the new painter, represented by Ito Kuroda, changed the content of Japanese art education with impressionist artistic ideas. Because Japan doesn't have a deep tradition of oil painting art like France, students studying in Japan (including the earliest Li Shutong) generally tend to follow various schools after Impressionism. Li, Wu Fating, Li Chaoshi, Xu Beihong, Chang Shuhong and others who have stayed in Europe advocate classical realistic art. After returning to China, international students usually take art teaching as their profession and spread their artistic ideas and painting techniques through schools.