An art district in China formerly known as the "knock-off painting capital of the world" - that once supplied over half of the world’s new oil paintings - has been forced to rebrand itself as a haven for original artwork.

Dafen Oil Painting Village, in the city of Shenzhen in the southern Guangdong province, found fame in the 1990s as it churned out replicas of classic works by the likes of Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali and Claude Monet.

During that period it was believed that around 60 per cent of new oil paintings in the world were painted in Dafen.

"Our fame was a double-edged sword,” Yu Sheng, executive vice president of the Dafen Fine Art Industry Association, told Chinese state media last July. “Dafen became a byword for cheap copies… even artists living in Shenzhen scorned Dafen.”

However, with foreign demand failing to pick up after dipping during the recession-hit 2000s, and a new generation of middle class Chinese developing a taste for art, Dafen artists are increasingly finding that creating is more lucrative than copying.

In 2016, 70 per cent of Dafen's sales were domestic, amounting to 4.1 billion yuan (£425 million).

Sat in his cluttered, paint-splattered workshop in the heart of Dafen, painter Zhao Bei said that he welcomed the shift. Demand for replicas was mostly driven by foreigners, but Mr Zhao sells his originals – such as the huge painting of the back of a battered van dominating his headquarters – mainly to locals.