In the Hot Seat

Liu Xiaodong painted Victoria Tang-owen with her brother, Edward Tang, at China Tang, the London restaurant founded by their late father, David Tang. Here, Tang-owen recalls the experience of sitting for Liu

“It all started when Flavio Del Monte, director of institutional relations at Massimo De Carlo gallery, contacted my brother, Edward. Flavio said that there were going to be portrait sessions with Liu Xiaodong in London and asked if we wanted to take part. It was a very exciting opportunity. Liu is a great artist; I’ve liked his work for a long time. His brushstrokes are so distinctive, and it’s amazing how he creates a narrative in his pieces.

We sat for Liu for one day for six hours straight in July 2019. Being in the room with such an important artist and sitting as his subject is fascinating. Liu wanted to paint us somewhere really personal to us. My brother and I both used to live in London and it is still a big part of our lives, but after my father passed away my brother went to live in New York and I’d already come back to live in Hong Kong. Most of the other sitters were being painted in their homes, but we suggested China Tang. It was like a second home to us, we had so many family meals there. Liu loved the idea.

We all jointly decided on the pose— me leaning lightly on my brother’s shoulder. Liu had given us free rein over what we wore; he just wanted it to be authentic to us. I wore an orange top and Edward wore a baby blue top, so the colours worked really well together. Liu himself wore an apron and this really slick hat, which gave him such authority. It was a camel-coloured fedora with a feather in it.

First Liu did a sketch on the canvas, which he always does first, to get the composition. Then he whipped out a table with his palette of beautiful colours. Liu is very quiet and very still when he’s painting. He’s very sure of his hand, very confident.

Occasionally he would pause for a minute, sit back and admire the canvas; sometimes he’d take a picture of the work on his phone. It was a full-on six hours. You have to try not to move, but you also want to give him something to work with—you want to be alive. But it was never uncomfortable and then, by the seventh hour, it was all over, the painting was complete. It was such an experience—and being able to share it with my brother was very special.”