View of European influence on Chinese modern masters

He tells China Daily that Chinese audiences need to overturn the mental barrier that they lack adequate academic knowledge to appreciate Western art.

Cinquini curated Masters and Masters, an exhibition juxtaposing paintings of Xu and his teachers at the distinguished National School of Fine Arts in Paris, in 2014. The exhibition toured Beijing, Shanghai and Zhengzhou in Central China's Henan province, drawing huge crowds of visitors.

He says Chinese visitors were very intelligent in finding the connections between Eastern and Western art, through Xu's paintings they are familiar with.

French Art Spring Salon relates to the same intimate links that show the development of Chinese and European art.

A typical case is Jean Souverbie, whose Chinese apprentice at the Paris college, Wu Guanzhong, mentioned in a memoir that Souverbie was a highly respected teacher who shaped his values of artistic creation and life. Of the two Souverbie paintings on show in Beijing, one is Nude at the Spring.

Cinquini says according to Wu's memoir, Souverbie once said in a drawing class that he saw the Notre-Dame Cathedral in the nude model. That explains why he structured the female body in a unique way in Nude at the Spring.

In his early years, Wu painted many nudes but none of them has survived and therefore, Souverbie's nude may serve as "a mirror" through which people can picture the style of Wu's past works, Cinquini adds.

Andre Maire's painting at the same show, displays the Western painters' mature approach to interpreting Oriental motifs in the early 20th century. Cinquini says this painting style had an impact on the Chinese painter Lin Fengmian.

Lin's works feature smooth curves and a simple palette, bringing an Eastern elegance to his oil paintings.

Lin, lesser-known to mainland collectors for decades, has become a market favorite in recent years because of auctioneers' promotional activities.