Lin Fengmian visits the National School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1979, where he studied oil painting in the 1920s.[Photo provided to China Daily]

The late painter Lin Fengmian, who challenged convention, is honored with a display of his works in Beijing. Lin Qi reports.

In 1931, master painter Qi Baishi received an artwork from Lin Fengmian, a fellow artist and then-principal of the Hangzhou Fine Arts School (now the China Academy of Art) in the country's east. In the painting Roosters, Lin portrays three white-feathered birds with red crests in light strokes of ink.

Qi treasured the gift, and after his death it was donated with many other artworks he created to the Beijing Fine Arts Academy.

The painting is now on show at the academy's art museum for an exhibition marking Lin's contributions to modernizing Chinese painting and fine-arts education.

Lin was also among the few people to recognize Qi's talent when he was still an unknown artist from Central China's Hunan province.

When Lin headed what is now the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1927, he employed Qi to teach classical Chinese painting.