From cheap labour to original painters: personalised demand has realised the industrial transformation of Dafen Oil Painting Village

As strange as it may sound, 70 per cent of the oil paintings on the market in Europe and the U.S. come from China, not from Europe. The more amazing thing is that 70 per cent of the paintings are 80 per cent from a village called Dafen.

Dafen is known as the “№1 Village of Oil Painting in China”. It is the most extensive commercial oil painting production and trading base in China and a globally vital oil painting trading centre. Dafen was initially a natural village, but in 1989, an art dealer named Jiang Huang came here and began to copy and sell oil paintings here. Thus, Dafen gradually became an oil painting village.

Dafen oil painting village now has more than 60 large-scale oil painting management companies, more than 1,200 galleries, studios and stores of painting materials such as frames, canvases and pigments. More than 8,000 people are engaged in the village’s oil painting industry, which radiates to more than 20,000 people in the surrounding areas. In Dafen Oil Painting Village, you can see a complete industrial chain of oil painting production and sales.

Dafen Oil Painting Village has its roots in copying Western paintings. You can see Monet’s <Impression Sunrise>, Leonardo da Vinci’s <Mona Lisa>, or Van Gogh’s <Sunflower>everywhere, all of which are replicas. A documentary in 2016 documented the lives of such a group of painters who copied Western classic oil paintings in Dafen and dubbed the group of painters ‘China’s Van Gogh’.

Now, does China’s Van Gogh still copy famous paintings day after day? I came to Oil Painting Village to find out the answer. When you step into Oil Painting Village, you are quickly attracted by creative murals on the buildings’ walls, statues on the roads, and paintings hanging on the walls or shelves. However, different from online reports is that not every store sells the same classic Western images; each store has its style. Some stores even mark the words ‘original gallery’.

‘Yiwen Original Art Gallery’ is a typical original gallery of those in Dafen. The owner told me that the oil painting village no longer only sells famous western paintings as it used to. With the increasing demands of customers on individuation, they now create differently.

Dafen was initially famous for its meticulous and perfect copies of old Western masters, but now people want original works. Previously, what painters sought was to paint the same as the originals. Currently, there are two main types of oil paintings in Oil Painting Village: replicas and originals. Painters create according to the client’s requirements. Not only replicating famous Western paintings, but according to customer preferences, painters will also copy some niche oil paintings. Some clients even require painters to add creation on the replicas to obtain personalised oil paintings, such as expressing stories or ideas about customers on paintings.

The changes in oil paintings have also led to changes in their prices, partly related to inflation in recent years. However, the status of replicas and originals has changed over the years. The 1990s and 2000s were the heyday of Western replicas when they were much more expensive than originals. At that time, painters also had the idea to show their creativity. Still, because they were not well-known, customers ignored them, so they could only continue to focus on copying. Now, originals are valued, and prices have changed. The cost of replicas in the oil painting village ranges from a few to dozens of pounds, while originals’ price can reach hundreds to thousands of pounds. Original works are extensive, such as portraits, scenes, or imagination, can become original works. These have nothing to do with whether painters are well known or not. The client cares more about the individuation and quality of the painting.

The rising price of oil paintings has also boosted painters’ pay ranges. Previously, painting workers who copied paintings could only get commissions of a few pounds per painting, and even a few pence at the lowest point, barely enough to satisfy their needs. Now their wages are set according to their level. In general, a replica salary is 35–45 pounds per square meter, while the salaries of an original from dozens to thousands of pounds per square meter.

Yang, an oil painter, was one of the first painters to come to Oil Painting Village and has been painting for 30 years. For him, painting two square meter replicas needs two days. He can earn 110 pounds from it. Even if he paints every day, he can only get an income similar to the office worker. However, most of the painters need 4 to 5 days. Portrait painter takes longer like a week, although they obtain income will be higher.

Compared with the past, the status of painters also increased. Previously, painting workers were just regarded as cheap labour; They colour on sketching most of the time, they do not need too much artistic ability. However, now due to market demands, some professional painters will come here to sell originals.

Besides, there has been a shift in the way dealers buy and sell with their clients. Previously, sales were mainly through offline and mutual introduction between customers. With the development of e-commerce, even foreign customers can see the quality and price of paintings and buy them online.

Furthermore, the client’s preference for painting has also changed.

Customers who purchase oil paintings are interior design companies, real estate companies, hotels and other companies with internal decoration needs. Now, there is a small number of retail customers with a need to decorate their own space. The art dealer, Fan, said that this type of client likes to require painters to create a painting that can represent their inner thoughts, and oil painting is just the right type of art for them. Previously, most of the customers were from Europe and the United States. Now half of the customers are from China. Because in the past, the Chinese didn’t know much about Western oil paintings. They preferred Chinese landscape paintings. Now, half and half.

Economic development increases the demand for art. A sharply rise in learning art in recent years. Moreover, the percentage of college majors majoring in fine arts is growing by 10 per cent a year. Parents also pay more attention to children’s artistic accomplishment. Therefore, some parents take their children to the oil painting village to learn from painters to create fine arts on Weekends.

On the other hand, with the emergence of people’s personalised demands, simple replicas can no longer meet people’s spiritual needs, so the originals have also been valued. The entire oil painting market and Dafen Oil Painting Village have also realised industrial transformation. ‘The oil painting village will take the route of fine products in the future, and the oil painting art will be presented in more diverse forms’, Fan expressed. The new generation of oil painters who work in the oil painting village has realised the dream of originals of oil painting artists that the older generation could not realise many years ago in this oil painting industry transformation. Dafen Oil Painting Village is no longer an oil painting factory that only sells replicas but a real paradise of oil painting art.