Oil painting came to China around the time of the Impressionist movement, in art, in the rest of the world.  Indeed, the impressionists borrowed from Eastern art, in creating impressionism, and, apparently, Eastern art re-borrowed from the impressionists.  Jian Bai Xu (we use artists' names in the Western manner: last name last, even though actual Chinese name order puts last name first) studied art in the early 1940's before China was closed off to the world for a while.  She began her studies in China but finished in America.  What she recalls of her lessons is that art is not about pretty pictures but is about capturing reality.  This painting of a fisher woman reminds me of some of the paintings by Van Gogh, like the potato eaters or some of his other portraiture.  For me, it is symbolic of the progress that art has made, in China, and the changes it has undergone over the last century.