Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Cheng Shifa was born in Songjiang county in the vicinity of Shanghai. He studied traditional Chinese painting at Shanghai Art Academy in the late 1930s, and subsequently earned a living through book illustration and New Year pictures. He concentrated on figure painting, in which he was influenced by Ren Yi, the leading painter of the Shanghai School. After visiting southwest China in the late 1950s he specialized in paintings of China’s national minorities. In 1956 he joined the Shanghai Chinese Painting Academy, of which he later became a director. During the 1970s his attention turned to bird and flower painting.