http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-11/13/content_5322720.htm

From the page:

“Pan Yuliang, renowned for her own model, self-portraits and bathing women, who was condemned as “depraved” in the 1930-40 by conservative officals and art critics in China, now gains her reputation — a female pioneer painter of western painting.

Pan, originally named Zhang Yuliang, of Jiangsu Province origin, was born in Anhui Province in 1895.

Her parents both died when she was a child. When she was 14, her uncle sold her to a brothel. In 1916, a local customs officer, named Pan Zanhua, bought her out of the brothel.

Thus, she went with Pan to Shanghai to study, renaming herself as Pan Yuliang. In 1918, she passed the exams and entered Shanghai Art School to learn western painting from Wang Jiyuan.

After graduating from Shanghai Art School she went to France to study in Lyons and Paris, sponsored by Pan Zanhua. She was awarded the Roman scholarship due to her excellent achievement in 1925, which enabled her to take further study in the Roman Royal Art Academy in Italy, studying painting and sculpture.”

Pan Yuliang’s life story was dramatised in the film “A Soul Haunted by Painting” starring the delectable Gong Li.