Western art's deep impression

Photo by Jiang Dong / China Daily

Qin explains Chinese buyers' frequent overseas purchases of high-priced Western artworks in recent years has attracted the attention of Western artists' families, such as the Renoirs and Picassos. They're very interested in entering the Chinese market, Qin says, adding Chinese buyers are particularly inclined to buy impressionists' pieces.

The France-based art market data firm Artprice says Chinese remained the top buyers for the fourth year running in 2013, accounting for $4.08 billion - about one-third - of global sales.

A Chinese buyer paid more than $27 million for Monet's 1907 Water Lilies at Christie's in May. Last year, the country's second-richest businessman, Wang Jianlin, bought Picasso's Claude et Paloma at Christie's for $28.2 million.

Wang has collected dozens of Western artworks. Most are by impressionists, including Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Cezanne and post-impressionist Gauguin, says Guo Qingxiang, leader of the art collection team of Wang's Dalian Wanda Group.

But it's not only China's superrich who are obsessed with Western art's big names.

More than 270,000 people visited Shanghai's K11 Art Mall's Monet exhibition from March to mid-May.