Legendary female painter Pan Yuliang (1895-1977) is considered one of China's greatest female painters, one of the first to use the lines of ink painting in Western-style compositions.Pan Yuliang defied social and artistic norms. She was sold to a brothel, later painted in Paris for 50 years, and her portraits of nudes were condemned as depraved in the 1930s. Today they are masterpieces.Thirty limited-edition digital prints of her representative works are on display at Xintiandi. The exhibition is free but reservations are required - the show drew huge crowds when it was presented in Taiwan last year.It includes reproductions of such famous paintings as "Woman Lying on Her Side", "Combing" and "Before the Catch". The prints are for sale at reasonable prices.Though many people know about Pan from the biopic film "Soul of a Painter" by Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan, this is an opportunity to view her East-meets-West works up close.According to Jeff Hsu, chairman of the Taiwan-based Jeff Hsu's Art - an exhibition organizer, Pan successfully used the lines of ink painting in Western-style compositions.Hsu considers Pan the greatest Chinese woman artist for her courage and lifelong dedication to art, defying the scorn of conservative art critics and the unfair social treatment of women at the time.Pan, originally named Zhang Yuliang, grew up in Anhui Province. She was sold to a brothel by her uncle when she was 14 after her parents death. When she was 21, a local customs officer, named Pan Zanhua, bought her freedom and she went with him to Shanghai. She took his name to become Pan Yuliang.In 1918, she entered Shanghai Art School to study Western painting from Wang Jiyuan. She excelled and after graduating she went to France and Italy to further study painting and sculpture.In 1937, she settled in Paris. Her works won numerous awards in Europe, such as the Gold Prize at the Roman International Art Exhibition and the Paris Gold Prize.After Pan's last days in France, she left a testament stating that she hoped her paintings would be returned to her homeland. More than 4,000 paintings were later donated to the Anhui Provincial Museum.Others were collected by the Paris Municipal Government, the French Ministry of Education, the National Modern Art Gallery and Cernushi Museum."An original work by a well-known painter usually costs a fortune and is normally out of ordinary people's reach," Hsu says. "But the price of a print work ranges only from several hundred yuan to several thousand yuan. He said collaboration with Anhui Provincial Museum aims to spread the glamour of Pan's paintings to more people.The exhibition opens on July 31, 9am-10pm at Bldg 1, 181 Taicang Rd,and will visit by free tickets.