THE SPREAD OF EUROPEAN OIL PAINTING IN CHINA IN THE XX<sup>TH</sup> CENTURY
With the outbreak of the Opium War in the mid-XIX<sup>th</sup> century, advanced foreign science and technology made the Chinese nationalists see the gap between them and the developed countries, so they gradually began to lose their sense of national pride and realized the importance of learning and adopting Western technology, Western culture, Western thought and Western education, and step by step they started to study the West comprehensively. In this context, European oil painting was brought to China. The first part of the article analyzes the heated debates that arose in Chinese cultural and artistic circles during the XX<sup>th</sup> century, when European art began to be widely introduced into China. In the second part, the spread of European oil painting in China and the development of Chinese oil painting in the XX<sup>th</sup> century are divided into three main stages according to the development characteristics of different eras. It also discusses the main ways of introducing and disseminating new painting techniques, teaching methods and the extent of influence at each stage. After more than 100 years, European oil painting was accepted by China and became an important part of Chinese culture.