WANT to lie on a bench chair under the Corsica sun with a glass of wine?

Perhaps a man-made sand corner at the exhibition “Les Patrons: French Maestros and Their Students, 1900-1950” running at LIHE Space might be a good compromise.

The exhibition features more than 100 oil canvases, sketches, pastels, watercolors and prints from the 19th and 20th centuries by French artists including Albert Besnard (1849-1943) and François Flameng (1856-1923), as well as Chinese artists who studied and lived in France in the early 20th century, such as Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) and Xu Beihong (1895-1953).

Rather than putting the artworks on walls, this immersive exhibition wraps visitors into the world of Paris at the end of the 19th century.

There’s a French landscape printed on a French window, a cluster of Baroque-style furniture and the reproduction of an outdoor café and living room for artists in a 19th-century Parisian apartment.

Accompanied by French melodies of the time, visitors, if turning right, will encounter a small man-made sand corner with a beach umbrella and beach chair — an outdoor scene in Corsica according to organizers. While turning right, they’ll embark on an indoor art journey, taking in masterpieces in a specially designed space as if they were still in their owner’s house, bringing them back to Paris in Belle Époque, the most diverse half century in French art history.

Philip Cinquini, curator of the exhibition, is a renowned art historian who has curated several cultural heritage exhibitions, such as “Shanghai/Paris: Modern Art of China (2013-2014)” and “Un maître et ses maîtres, Xu Beihong et la peinture académique française (2014).”

In the first half of the 20th century many Chinese artists in France studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. The teacher-student friendship between them and their French teachers has become folklore.

Painter Xu studied art in France from 1919 to 1927. In his years in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, he was a student of different academic artists, including François Flameng, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Fernand Cormon, Albert Besnard and Lucien Simon.

“Xu regarded his mentor Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret as his second father; Lin invited his teacher and friend André Claudot to China to teach in the academies of fine arts in Peking and Hangzhou together with him,’’ said Cinquini.

“After entering the studio of Jean Souverbie as he had been longing for, Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010) kept studying in André Lhote’s Free Art Academy after class.

“In essence, Chinese and French fine arts are deeply bonded,” Cinquini added.

The highlight of the exhibition is “Baigneuse Au Cygne” by Paul-Albert Besnard (1849-1934) in 1905.

The oil canvas depicts the naked back of a woman sitting in front of a pond, one of her hands holds a baby at her back.

Besnard was dean of Academie de France, Roma and National School of Fine Arts in Paris from 1924 to 1932. He was famous for his brilliant use of traditional sketch skills, bright and distinctive choice of color, and especially for his accurate catch of the verve of the picture, which was much appreciated by Xu who received Besnard’s guidance in sketch skills and nude painting.

One interesting thing about this painting is when a new collector tried to repair it in 2003, a male figure of a previous painting started to surface from the pond.

Another impressive canvas at the exhibition is “A Portrait of Mrs Meunier” by François Flameng in 1907.

The lady, in a gorgeous evening gown with a long pearl necklace standing in a balcony, stares at the viewers.

As if time freezes at this moment in the dusk inside an old castle of a bygone era.

Dates: Through July 26; Monday to Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday to Sunday, 10am-10pm

Venue: 5/F, LIHE Space, North Annex of the Wheelock Square

Address: 1717 Nanjing Road W.