A brush with storytelling

While portraits at a CAFA show offer intimate glimpses of their subjects, they also reveal the evolution of contemporary oil painting in China. Lin Qi reports.

Young Woman Singer, a portrait of Peng Liyuan, attracted much public attention when her husband Xi Jinping became China's president almost three decades after she modeled for painter Jin Shangyi.

Observers delight in talking about Jin's selection of his model from three young woman students of the China Conservatory of Music, but overlook the work's innovative spirit as a representative of the artist's "new classic" practice in the 1980s.