Savouring the Fragrance by Li Jiaen, 2007, showing a pale-costumed Chinese opera figure beside a painted vase of red, yellow, pink and white flowers

Savouring the Fragrance - Texture Detail

Woman in Yellow Robe with Roses - Detail 2

Woman in Yellow Robe with Roses - Detail 3

Woman in Yellow Robe with Roses - Detail 4

Woman in Yellow Robe with Roses - Detail 5

Established

Savouring the Fragrance

Name: Savouring the Fragrance
Brand: Paint For Heart
Price: 5394.0 SGD
Availability: InStock

Artist Li Jiaen

Creation Date 2007

Material Oil on canvas

Size 41 x 31 cm

Category original

Make this artwork part of your collection Available

Current total $5,394.00

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Perspectives

A closer look

Artwork Notes

Art appreciation

A Chinese opera figure occupies the left side of the painting. Her face and eyes turn toward the left edge, away from the large bouquet on her right. One hand rests at her chest; the other is held lower at the waist beneath long pale sleeves. The bouquet is almost as tall as the figure, its red, yellow, pink and white blossoms held in a painted porcelain vase. A small cup at the bottom fixes this elaborate pairing within a recognisable interior arrangement. The averted gaze and settled hands preserve the formality of a stage pose.

The face and makeup are set out in comparatively smooth, decisive shapes. The headdress, petals and porcelain decoration are more broken and heavily worked. A broad area of pale yellow costume stands against the orange-brown ground, while two dark lengths of hair descend beside the face and divide the pale costume from the vase. Red and green accents move rapidly through the bouquet; the figure's poised outline remains calmer. This contrast keeps the flowers active without allowing them to overwhelm her presence.

The title points to fragrance, although the figure makes no literal gesture of smelling the flowers. She and the bouquet stand side by side; the title links her averted face with the flowers held close to the same narrow interior space. Li Jiaen grew up amid the folk and Kunqu traditions of Jiangnan and has repeatedly painted opera figures and flowers. This work brings those recurring subjects together, using an averted gaze, restrained posture and decorative colour to sustain its theatrical character.

Theme

Style and context

Chinese opera constructs character through voice, gaze, codified hand positions and the movement of long sleeves. When opera figures entered modern oil painting, artists had to translate this established theatrical language into the volume, colour and material surface of a different medium.

Li Jiaen has built his practice around Kunqu figures, flowers and the cultural imagery of Jiangnan, using the palette knife to press, drag and layer colour. In Savouring the Fragrance, smooth shapes keep the face and costume legible, while broken marks give the flowers and porcelain a denser surface. The vertical figure and vase balance one another, allowing theatrical image and still life to share the composition without one becoming a backdrop for the other.

Artist Profile

About the artist

Li Jiaen (born 1947, Shanghai) is a Chinese oil painter and a member of the Shenzhen branch of the China Artists Association. He grew up within the folk-opera culture of the Yangtze River Delta, an environment that shaped his lifelong interest in traditional theatrical imagery and its movement, colour, and stage presence. His career has centred on translating Chinese opera figures, flower subjects, and Jiangnan cultural memory into oil painting.

Within that practice, he became known for working with the palette knife rather than the brush, a method that distinguishes his mature paintings while remaining secondary to his long engagement with Chinese performing-arts themes. Li Jiaen’s work was exhibited in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2002.

In 2006, his Kunqu opera figure paintings received praise from the playwright Pai Hsien-yung, linking his practice to a wider cultural revival of Kunqu aesthetics.

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