Art collectors may celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival with an encounter with French landscape masters. The exhibition Corot to Monet brought by Sotheby's Hong Kong offers 20 pieces of artwork featuring leading Realist painters and later the great Impressionist generation. It outlines the evolution from theBarbizonschool to Impressionism through their definitive subject, landscape.

The display from June 22 to 25 at Park Hyatt Beijing is a continuation of Sotheby's strategy in cultivating Chinese art buyers' interests in Western masterpieces from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

The market has indeed observed that top-notch Chinese connoisseurs have laid their hands on the category of Impressionism and 20th century Western art in recent years.

"The Chinese market for fine art has great potential, even though there are many inherent problems that need to be solved, while the Western art market has been comparably stable but lacking direction." Said Guan Yu, director of the Beijing-based Art Market Monitor of Artron.

She added Chinese buyers largely focus on homegrown art, while almost all overseas art dealers hope the developing Chinese market will pay more attention to a category they known best: artwork by Western modern masters.

Noticeably, Corot to Monet was one of the two opening exhibitions of Sotheby's newly constructed space gallery in Hong Kong throughout May.

"This transformative space gives Sotheby's greater flexibility to offer a great variety of art on a year round basis and beyond Chinese and Asian art categories — for instance, Impressionist and Modern art, Old Masters paintings and European decorative arts," Sotheby's Asia's Chief Executive Officer Kevin Ching said.

Ching added the company always looks at opportunities when touring such exhibitions. It is also going to Shanghai and other major cities.

"We don't see a big market for dealing in Western art. A lot of possible investors and collectors prefer looking on the sidelines because they are uncertain this category will maintain its value and be marketable. There are also tax issues," said Guan.

linqi@chinadaily.com.cn