Michael and Khoan Sullivan, 1944.[Photo provided to China Daily]

One item is a letter that artist Pang Xunqin wrote to accompany a painting he gave to Sullivan titled Tang Dancing Girl, which was among a series of traditional baimiao line drawings he made in the 1940s.

There is also a menu for a dinner in 1980, when Sullivan was invited by the Chinese Artists' Association to visit China, which was signed by Sullivan's Chinese artist friends, a number of whom he had not seen for 34 years.

"The idea is to show that, over a long period, Michael was in touch with people in China, from the 1940s right to the end of his life," Vainker says.

Sullivan was born in Toronto in 1916, and moved to Britain at the age of 3 with his family. After graduating from the University of Cambridge in 1939, he left for China to drive trucks for the International Red Cross. He lived in China for six years and in 1943 he married Wu Baohuan, a bacteriologist, who became known as Khoan Sullivan.

"He worked for the Red Cross as a way of helping in the war, but not fighting. He liked the country. He met Khoan and became familiar with Chinese art. So when he left the country, he trained formally in Chinese art," says Vainker.