Chen Yanning is a Chinese painter who lives and works in the United States. He was born in the southern province of Guangzhou, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1965.
He continued to work at the Academy as a painter until 1986 when he relocated to America, to study at Oklahoma City University. His early Chinese works include the poster Chairman Mao Inspects the Guangdong Countryside (1972) and New Doctor of the Fishing Port (1973).
He has had many public portrait commissions most notably for the British Royal Family, in which he painted Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne. Yanning’s portrait of the Queen was subsequently used by Royal Mail for the Jubilee Year stamp.
Yanning works with oil paint, a medium predominantly used by western artists. Chinese painting was traditionally based on the technique of brush painting, which consisted of similar techniques to calligraphy using black ink or coloured pigments.
Although a very different medium to oil paint, Yanning’s portraits employ an impasto technique, which imbues the surface with an almost blurred washed finish, seeming to suggest the sustained influence of his country’s native painting.