He painted cows out of a desire for peace and a strong attachment to the motherland. He hailed cattle as the incarnation of courage, persistence and diligence. Some of his paintings of cows are on display at the current exhibition at the National Museum of China.

Li Xiaoke, his son who is also a painter in his own right, says his father's studio was simply furnished with sofas, desks and bookshelves but was packed with books, paintings and copybooks of calligraphy.

He says Shi Niu Tang meant more than a studio to his father, as it was "a battlefield" where Li Keran strove to map out a future for Chinese ink painting, as he daubed and layered ink on paper to create a thrilling world of light and shade.

"Father worked on his desk every day except for when he was ill. He rested only on the day of Chinese New Year.

"He would practice calligraphy after he was done with painting. He seldom turned down people who asked for his calligraphy inscriptions. He always had a full list of such commissions waiting to be completed."

Wu Hongliang, a Beijing-based art critic and curator, says as contemporary Western art was introduced to the country in the 1980s, doubts lay over the future of Chinese ink painting. He says Shi Niu Tang bore witness to Li's efforts to revive the vigor of ink-brush art as the two artistic cultures of East and West began to clash.

"He wrote down the renowned statement, 'dong fang ji bai', meaning that longstanding Chinese art would enter a new dawn of brilliance."

Li Xiaoke says Shi Niu Tang also witnessed the last happy times for his father where he received friends from artistic and cultural circles, both from within China and abroad. Among them were Lu Yanshao (1909-93) the renowned Chinese painter, Kaii Higashiyama (1908-99), the Japanese writer and painter and Tsungdao Lee the Chinese-American physicist and Nobel Prize winner.

He says his father kept a low profile, and one of his few entertainments was listening to Peking Opera arias on an old radio in his studio.

And the studio was where Li Keran took his last breath, when he was struck down by a heart attack in the middle of a conversation with visitors on Dec 5, 1989.

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn

If you go:

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays, through Jan 3, 2018. 16 East Chang'an Avenue, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6511-6400.