1945年生，广州人。
    1965年毕业于广州美术学院舞台美术班。
    1970年至1986年为广东画院专业画家,在此期间，他的作品曾多次获奖，他的油画和国画多次被选入“全国美展”。
    1986年赴美国留学；1988年，受聘于美国奥克拉荷马市立大学任教。
    个展：1987年、1989年美国哈夫纳画廊（纽约）。
    联展：1982年法国春季沙龙展（巴黎）；1987年中国当代油画展（纽约）。
    获奖：1991年荣获英国艺术家协会主办的肖像比赛大奖。
    此后连续为英国皇家及贵族绘制肖像。在澳大利亚、巴西、英国、加拿大、法国、香港、新加坡和美国举办过多次个展及群展。作品被中国美术馆、博物馆、西澳大利亚美术馆及美国、新加坡、日本和欧洲各地等私人收藏。

　　Chen Yanning was born in Guangzhou, China in 1945.. At the age of fourteen, Chen attended the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Preparatory School from 1959 to his graduation in 1965. After graduation, his works have been selected for Chinese National Art Exhibition in 1972,1973, and 1974. In 1981, Chen held his first solo exhibition in Singapore. In 1982, his work was selected and exhibited in the Spring Salon in Paris, France. Yanning has participated in many exhibitions throughout the world which include Yugoslavia (1982), Australia (1984), Japan (1984), Canada (1984), and Brazil (Saint Paul Bicentennial Exhibition, 1985).
　　Chen was on academic exchange in Australia in 1984. In 1986, Chen was invited under the invitation of the Scottish Arts Council to hold a one-man show and conduct lectures during his stay in Great Britain. In the same year, Chen left China to study abroad in the United States. Chen Yanning was one of the contemporary Chinese oil masters whose works were selected to be included in The Contemporary Oil Paintings from the People's Republic of China Exhibition in New York of 1987.Two solo exhibitions then followed at the Hefner Galleries in New York in 1988 and 1989.In 1988, Chen graduated from the Oklahoma City University and stayed on campus as an instructor at the Arts Department.
　　His outstanding talent in portraiture won him the national prize in a portraiture competition held in conjunction with the Federation of British Artists in England in 1991. In 1998, Chen's paintings were also shown in the exhibition: China 5000 Years at the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York, New York. In 1999, Yanning was commissioned to execute a formal portrait of her highness Queen Elizabeth II in the Buckingham Palace in England. Yanning's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was then selected as postage stamp of the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002.Chen Yanning's paintings are in the permanent collections of the Chinese National Gallery and the Museum of Chinese History, as well as in the California State Capital Museum, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the West Australian National Gallery, the New Jersey State House, the American philosophical society, the Castle Howard, the J.P. Morgan CHASE, Tiffany & Co.Princeton University, New York University, London University, and the Middlebury College Museum of Art. Yanning's works can also be found in private collections in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Great Britain, Switzerland, France, and throughout Europe. Yanning has also had six books published with his works.