Chang Shana, born in Lyon, was named after the river of Saone, and remembers her home being a meeting point for Chinese artists in France. "My father and his fellow artists loved their country very much. They studied there for the purpose of serving their people back home."

Fan Di'an, the head of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, says these pilgrims of art brought back to China not only advanced approaches to art and education, but they also carried with them an ideal for the renaissance of Chinese art.

"They studied in the same country, while their development in career, whether they returned or stayed in France, diversified to fertilize the land of modern Chinese art," he says.

Before Wu Guanzhong departed France for home in 1949, he wrote a letter to Wu Dayu, his teacher at the Hangzhou Fine Arts School (now China Academy of Art).

Some works of the two acclaimed painters, both of whom attended the National High School of Fine Arts in Paris, are on display at the current exhibition.

"The study of art does not take place in Europe, Paris or the studios of masters," Wu wrote in the letter, "it is in my country, my homeland and in my heart. I'm hurrying back, and I will start all over again."