Next-gen Village Tiger Painters
local tiger-painting industry. He was the first person in the village to realize that painting tigers could create business opportunities. Thirty years ago, Wang and his partners became dissatisfied with selling their paintings only in nearby towns. They started focusing on bigger cities. Later, one of his six-foot tiger paintings sold for 100 yuan (around US$14) in a city at a time when the average income of villagers in Wanggongzhuang was less than 30 yuan (around US$4) per month. The “big sale” caused a huge sensation. For a while, many villagers came to him to learn painting.
Tigers from Wang Jianmin’s brush are calm and gentle. He placed them in environments familiar to Chinese farmers such as lying beside a reed pond or surrounded by lotus flowers. The juxtaposition of images proved quite popular in the market. In Wang Jianmin’s words, he combined the tiger paintings with “aesthetic elements of rural China.”
Tiger Painting Sales in the Mobile Internet Era
At 36, Wang Jianfeng is the current village Party secretary of Wanggongzhuang. He started to learn traditional Chinese realistic painting at the age of 13 from a famous local tiger-painting artist. He explained that in contrast with the older-generation painters, young artists tend towards using bright colors to highlight the ferociousness of tigers, rather than relatively warm colors to make the tiger look milder.
Wang Jianfeng became the first person in Wanggongzhuang to harness live streaming to sell his works as he saw business opportunities emerge with the development of the mobile internet and the popularization of short videos and live streaming. He began to explore new channels for painting sales. Except for live streaming, his wife also filmed his painting process and posted videos on the internet. Today, Wang Jianfeng has more than
110,000 followers on social media platforms. When the market is good, his maximum monthly income from online sales can reach as much as 500,000 yuan (US$72,084).
Using the internet to sell tiger paintings has become a trend in Wanggongzhuang. Statistics show that about a third of paintings produced there are sold online.