《来自上海的画家》根据真实故事改编，讲叙一名女性由妓女到画家的人生轨迹。十四岁的潘玉良是一个孤儿，由吸食鸦片成瘾的叔叔收养。她乘坐蒸汽船的三等舱来到一个完全陌生的地方，一上岸，叔叔就将她卖到“永春楼”，开始她在妓院烟气缭绕的后房里的人生。两年后，逃离悲惨命运的机会出现：一位政府官员愿意为她赎身，收她为妾，带她去过20世纪20年代上海五光十色的新生活，那里弥漫着爱情和艺术的味道。可是，潘玉良发现自己拥有绘画天赋的同时，也意识到更宝贵的东西也将离她而去，那就是安定的生活。

Based on a true story, The Painter of Shanghai tells the captivating tale of one woman’s journey from a life of prostitution to the art studios of Shanghai.

At the age of fourteen Pan Yuliang, an orphan girl in the care of her opium-addicted uncle, finds herself in the third-class cabin of a steamship bound for a strange new town. When Pan and her uncle arrive in the city he sells his niece to ‘The Hall of Eternal Splendour’, where she is destined to live out her life as a prostitute in its smoky back rooms.

And yet, two years later, escape appears in the unlikely form of a government inspector who will take Pan as his concubine and introduce her to a glamorous new life in 1920s Shanghai: a life of love and of art.

But as Pan begins to realize her talent as a painter she also sees that she may lose something even more precious: a life of safety.