Born in 1965 in Shuangyashan, Heilongjiang Province, Li Tianyuan is currently a tenured professor and doctoral supervisor at the Painting Department of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from the Mural Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1988 and later pursued research studies at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in the United States. Li’s artistic practice spans oil painting, photography, and installation art, employing a distinctive visual language to explore themes of humanity, nature, and culture. His representative work, Yezi, won the Gold Medal at the inaugural Annual Exhibition of Chinese Oil Painting in 1991.

With a realistic touch, The Letter captures a young woman in the 1990s reading a letter by natural light at a window, exemplifying Li Tianyuan’s early artistic style. The setting—a woman by the window, her head slightly tilted downward, rendered in a meticulous realist approach—immediately evokes comparisons to Johannes Vermeer’s serene, still-life-like portraits from centuries past. Notably, the young woman’s gaze extends beyond the frame, carrying a hint of watchfulness. This subtle expression reminds the viewer that The Letter depicts a brief pause in the act of reading—a fleeting instant in which the reader momentarily steps out of her deeply private engagement with the letter. Her gaze could also be interpreted as a perspective from the past looking toward the present.