In 1980, Chen Yifei left China for New York to further his studies and growth as an artist. It is not hard to imagine how encountering the conceptual, pop, installation and new media art of New York in the 1980s would have come as a shock to Chen, long trained in Chinese academic realism. It was during this period that Chen began to reflect on the tools of his training. Stripping them of the heroism and idealism of Socialist Realism, Chen delved deeper into realism in pursuit of transcendent ideals that could survive the trauma of culture shock and be understood across cultures. In a span of only three years, Chen had successfully turned these new personal and artistic challenges into opportunity. Beginning in 1982 with his paintings of his hometown and of Suzhou, Chen quickly found his works embraced by the mainstream American public. That summer, Chen quit job as an oil painting restorer and went to Europe, religiously visiting art museums across the continent, deriving spiritual and artistic nourishment and inspiration from the European masters. Returnjng then to China, he further gathered materials and inspiration through his travels along the Yangtse River. Returning to New York in the fall, his new works were exhibited in quick succession at the Hammer Galleries, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and New England Center for Contemporary Arts, Connecticut, in 1983, 1984 and 1985. The 1984 New York Times and Art News praised Chen's style, naming it 'Romantic Realism', and marking the beginning of the impact of Suzhou Creek series in the United States.
The work Journey at Dawn (Lot 2127), created in 1986, was published in the catalogue "Chen Yifei" by Beijing Huayi Publishing House in 1990. Here Chen Yifei adopts Pre-Raphaelite School's faithfulness to natural light and shade, turning light into an artistic language to express sentiments in landscape paintings. Chen Yifei applies thick layers of paint and techniques of frosting to depict the daybreak. The enchanting atmosphere of enshrouding smoke and mist is expressed through the hazy rays of light at dawn. The tactic Chen Yifei used to handle the continuous line of the rooftops is another focus of this painting. The artist thoughtfully integrates the skills found in classical oil paintings with the conceptual ideas of Western contemporary art, so as to advance realistic oil painting to a new level. As Paul C?zanne suggested in 1904 to "treat nature by the means of the cone, cylinder and sphere", the black tile roofs and the white walls of the waterside village houses in Jiangnan are treated and depicted as a dynamic aggregation of geometric forms. The hard edges of the architecture are softened by the water's reflection, balancing the sharp straight lines of the geometric forms. The still canal water surface and the resting boat capture this moment that the artist has selected, giving the painting a sense of spirituality, tranquility, and nostalgia. Thus one can see Chen Yifei has been faithful to the classical tenets realism while, at the same time, takes the genre into the contemporary era.