Classical art market growing

Parts of Qing court painter Jiang Tingxi’s flowerandbird album that are auctioned in Beijing this month.[Photo provided to China Daily]

He also says modern ink art attracts a bigger group of potential buyers because it deals with more everyday subjects and is thus easier for people to appreciate.

Typically, a robust art market also relies on potential buyers being educated about the subject to better recognize the value of China's artistic legacy, and not be focused on just one or two iconic works.

A good example of the obsession with iconic pieces was seen when the Palace Museum held the Precious Collection of the Stone Moat exhibition last year.

At that time, visitors endured hours of waiting just to see the Qingming Shanghe Tu, a 12th-century painting known as one of the top treasures collected by the museum.

But after the work was replaced with other equally important but lesser-known works at the exhibition, the number of visitors to the exhibition dropped noticeably.

Explaining the decline in the visitor numbers, Yu Hui, a researcher with the Palace Museum, says the Qingming Shanghe Tu attracts a lot of viewers because it is an iconic work, but the other works, largely literati paintings, require an understanding of Chinese art history.

To counter this phenomenon, he suggests that more study material on classical Chinese paintings and calligraphy be included in school texts so that the younger generation get a complete picture of how Chinese ink art has evolved.