He pays all the bills on $400 a week that he earns painting apartments, Ms. Perez said.
A tragic loss which earned the painting a place in history.
Mr. Hua, 48, said that were it not for the money he earned from painting, he too would be a member of the "low-end population". In his conversations with workers, some said they felt painfully unwelcome in Beijing.
One winter day, when we had eaten up the last of our moldy yams, my father secretly sneaked out of our commune to travel to a distant village to try and earn money painting houses.
He hitchhiked and rode freight trains, earning money painting signs, playing guitar, and singing in the streets and saloons along the way.
The personal element he brought to traditional objective landscape painting earned him the admiration of all those inspired by the Russian landscape.
Vermeer, though trained and in the artists' guild, earned little from painting and stopped altogether during the crash of 1672 to concentrate on making money.
Another simian painting earned him a second-finalist spot in 2014 in the same competition – Blue Monkey, featuring a solemn, blue-faced baboon dressed as an Orthodox cleric.
Done in 1603, when Rubens was 26 and on a diplomatic mission to Spain, the painting earned him instant fame, and its thrusting composition — with horse and rider advancing out of the picture toward the viewer — was imitated throughout Europe.
