BEIJING — Even as the cost of his quarry pulled away from the $100 million mark, Liu Yiqian remained calm.

北京——尽管刘益谦的猎物的竞价已超过1亿美元，他依然很平静。

“I was on the phone with a girl from Christie’s Hong Kong who was bidding on my behalf, and she kept dropping the phone because she was so nervous,” Mr. Liu recalled in his Beijing hotel room on Friday. “I told her, ‘Why are you so nervous? I’m the one paying, and I’m not even nervous. Just buy it.’”

周五（11月13日），刘益谦在北京下榻的酒店接受采访时回忆说：“我给佳士得(Christie’s)香港分部代我出价的那个女孩打电话。她紧张死了，手抖得厉害，电话老是掉。我说，‘这有怎么好紧张的？我出钱都没紧张，你紧张什么呢？就是花钱把它买回来。’”

Thus did Mr. Liu manage to secure “it” — an oil portrait of an outstretched nude woman by the early-20th-century artist Amedeo Modigliani — at a Christie’s auction in New York on Nov. 9. During the tense nine-minute sale, he beat out five opponents by offering $170.4 million with fees, the second-highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction.

就这样，11月9日，在纽约的佳士得拍卖会上，刘益谦成功得到了“它”——20世纪初艺术家阿梅代奥·莫迪利亚尼(Amedeo Modigliani)创作的舒展的裸体女人油画。在紧张的9分钟拍卖过程中，他击败5名对手，以1.704亿美元（含佣金）购得该画，成为艺术品拍卖史上的第二高价。

“As soon as I heard that it went to an Asian buyer, I knew it was him,” said Wang Wei, Mr. Liu’s wife, who was in Hong Kong at the time.

刘益谦的妻子王薇说：“一说亚洲人我就知道是他拍的。”当时她在香港。

“Modigliani didn’t make very many nude paintings, and this is one of his best,” she added. “It was definitely worth it.”

她补充说：“他[莫迪利亚尼]创造的裸体画不多，但这是他最顶级的。我觉得很值得。”

Before last week, Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang, both 52, had already made a name for themselves in China’s art circles, he in particular as the most flamboyant of the country’s small group of major collectors. To many, he is the brash former taxi driver turned billionaire who provoked an uproar when he bought a tiny Ming dynasty porcelain cup for $36.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction — and proceeded to be photographed drinking tea from the antique vessel.

在上周之前，刘益谦和王薇（都是52岁）已经在中国艺术界很出名了，尤其是刘益谦，他是中国重要收藏家这个小圈子里出手最阔绰的。很多人都知道，他是一位出租车司机出身的傲慢的亿万富翁，在苏富比(Sotheby’s)的一场拍卖会上以3630万美元买下一个小小的明代瓷杯，后来还曝出他用这件古董喝茶的照片，引起一片哗然。

Ms. Wang is known as the driving force and general director behind the couple’s Long Museum, which has two branches in Shanghai. Over more than 20 years, the two have amassed an extensive collection of mostly traditional and contemporary Chinese art, much of it on display in the museums.

这对夫妇在上海拥有两家龙美术馆，王薇是美术馆的幕后推手和总监。在过去20多年里，这对夫妇收集了大量艺术品，大多是中国古代和当代艺术品，其中很多在这两家美术馆展览。

Days after their latest blockbuster purchase, Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang were back at it, flying to Beijing to attend the fall sales of a top auction house, China Guardian. They said their goal was to transform the Long Museum into a world-class destination that could compete with the likes of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

在他们最近这次引起轰动的购买之后数日，刘益谦和王薇又要出手了。他们飞到北京，参加顶级拍卖公司中国嘉德的秋季拍卖会。他们说，自己的目标是把龙美术馆变成一个能与纽约的现代艺术博物馆(Museum of Modern Art)和古根海姆博物馆(Guggenheim Museum)相媲美的世界级博物馆。

And nothing, Mr. Liu said, says world class quite like a Modigliani nude.

刘益谦说，没什么比莫迪利亚尼的裸体画更能称得上是世界级的了。

“Every museum dreams of having a Modigliani nude,” Mr. Liu said. “Now, a Chinese museum has a globally recognized masterpiece, and my fellow countrymen no longer have to leave the country to see a Western masterpiece. I feel very proud about that.”

刘益谦说：“哪个世界级美术馆不想收藏莫迪利亚尼的裸体画啊？买这个作品能让中国美术馆藏有一件世界名画。今后我们的国人不用走出国门欣赏西方艺术品。这对我来说是一个比较有自豪感的事情。”

He added, “The message to the West is clear: We have bought their buildings, we have bought their companies, and now we are going to buy their art.”

他还说：“我们向西方传递的信息很明确：我们买人家的楼了，我们买人家的公司了，现在在买人家的艺术品。”

With his acquisition of the nude, a 1917-18 canvas known as “Nu Couché,” that message certainly seems to have gotten across.

通过买下这幅名为《侧卧的裸女》(Nu Couché)的油画（创作于1917年至1918年），他肯定把这个信息传递了出去。

“This purchase was a proclamation of his arrival,” said Thomas Galbraith, managing director of auctions at Paddle8, an online auction house. “Anyone in the art world who didn’t know his name knows it now.”

在线拍卖公司Paddle8的拍卖管理总监托马斯·加尔布雷思(Thomas Galbraith)说：“这次购买是在宣告他的到来。艺术界之前不知道他名字的人现在都知道了。”

Mr. Liu’s rise is a classic rags-to-riches tale of post-Mao China. Growing up in a working-class family in Shanghai in the 1960s and ’70s, he said, he knew early on that he wanted to go into business. After dropping out of middle school, he began selling leather handbags, then saved enough money to buy a taxi.

刘益谦的发家史是后毛泽东时代典型的白手起家的故事。20世纪六七十年代，他在上海的一个工人家庭长大。他说，他很早就知道自己想从商。中学辍学后，他开始卖皮包，然后攒钱买了辆出租车。

In 1983, he was still eking out a living as a small-time businessman when he met Ms. Wang, who was working as a typist at Shanghai Normal University.

1983年遇见王薇时，他还是靠做小生意勉强为生，当时王薇是上海师范大学的一名打字员。

By the late 1980s, with China’s economic liberalization in full swing, Mr. Liu’s fortunes turned as a series of stock market investments he had made began to take off.

到80年代末，随着中国经济全面放开，刘益谦之前投资的一系列股票开始飙升，他的命运出现了转折。

Today, he is chairman of the Sunline Group, a holding company based in Shanghai whose interests include chemicals, pharmaceuticals, real estate development and a financial unit. In addition to owning a stake in a pharmaceutical company, he was also an early investor in Beijing Council International Auction, an auction company in the Chinese capital started by one of Ms. Wang’s friends. According to Forbes, his assets in 2015 totaled $1.22 billion.

如今，他是上海新理益集团的董事长。该集团的业务包括化工产品、药品、房地产开发和金融。除了在一家制药公司持有股份，他还是北京匡时拍卖国际有限公司的早期投资人之一，这家位于中国首都的拍卖公司是王薇的一个朋友创立的。据福布斯排行榜，2015年，刘益谦的总资产为12.2亿美元。

“His decisions might seem very risky, but people forget he has spent his whole career assessing risk in the capital markets,” said Dong Guoqiang, chairman of Beijing Council and a longtime friend of the couple.

北京匡时拍卖国际有限公司的董事长、这对夫妇的老朋友董国强说：“他的决定可能看起来很冒险，但是你别忘了，他的整个事业就是评估资本市场的风险。”

China’s art market was still in its nascent stages when Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang began going to auctions and buying art in the early 1990s. Over the years, what started as a hobby became an obsession.

20世纪90年代初，刘益谦和王薇开始去拍卖会购买艺术品，当时中国的艺术市场仍处于萌芽期。最初那只是他们的爱好，现在他们痴迷其中。

While Mr. Liu preferred collecting traditional Chinese artworks and objects, Ms. Wang focused on acquiring art from the Cultural Revolution era and, later, contemporary Chinese art and art from throughout Asia. They began to collect Western artists as well, and their holdings now include work from Jeff Koons’s mirror-polished sculpture series.

刘益谦更喜欢收藏中国传统艺术品和物件，而王薇专注于购买“文革”时期的艺术品，后来喜欢上中国当代艺术品和整个亚洲的艺术品。他们也开始收藏西方艺术家的作品，包括杰夫·昆斯(Jeff Koons)光亮的雕塑系列。

Several years ago, Ms. Wang, a self-proclaimed “art fanatic,” came up with the idea of opening a museum so they could show their collection to the public. But first, she needed to persuade Mr. Liu.

几年前，自称“对艺术痴狂”的王薇产生了设立博物馆的想法，这样就能向公众展示自己的藏品。但是首先，她需要说服刘益谦。

“All of our friends were buying private planes, and he said he wanted to buy a plane, too,” she said. “I refused. I said let’s just put in some more money and start a museum. It will be good for Shanghai, and it will be good for the country.”

她说：“之前他想买飞机，其他朋友都在买飞机。我说不行。我们把这个钱去做一个美术馆。这美术馆会对上海也好，对整个国家也好。”

So in 2012, Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang opened the Long Museum Pudong, one of many private museums that have begun in Shanghai in recent years as the local government tries to transform the city into an international cultural capital.

2012年，刘益谦和王薇开设了龙美术馆浦东馆。它是近些年上海开始出现的诸多私人博物馆之一，因为上海市政府致力于把这座城市打造成国际文化之都。

In 2014, they opened a second branch, the Long Museum West Bund, part of a government-sponsored project to develop a waterfront cultural corridor in Shanghai that includes private museums, a large entertainment complex, and soon, the headquarters for DreamWorks’ new Chinese joint venture animation studio.

2014年，他们开设了第二个分馆——龙美术馆西岸馆，它是上海市政府开发的河畔文化走廊的一部分。这个文化走廊包括私人博物馆、大型娱乐中心，以及即将亮相的梦工厂新合资动画公司的总部。

Exhibitions range from a large show of revolutionary art to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II to a performance-art exhibition curated by Klaus Biesenbach of MoMA and Hans Ulrich Obrist of the Serpentine Gallery in London.

他们的博物馆举办各种各样的展览，既有庆祝“二战”结束70周年的革命艺术品大型展览，也有由现代艺术博物馆(MoMA)的克劳斯·比森巴赫(Klaus Biesenbach)和伦敦蛇形画廊(Serpentine Gallery)的汉斯·乌尔里克·奥布里斯特(Hans Ulrich Obrist)策划的行为艺术展。

Although they received a discount from the government for the land in the West Bund area, Ms. Wang said, almost all of the operation costs — about $9.5 million for both museums this year, she estimated — are undertaken by her and her husband.

王薇说，虽然他们购买西岸那块地时，政府给了一点优惠，但是几乎所有的运营成本都由她和丈夫来承担。她估计，今年这两座博物馆的运营费约为950万美元。

“I think the rest of my life and money will be dedicated to building up this museum,” Mr. Liu said, taking a puff of a cigarette. (The couple plan to open a third branch, in the southwest city of Chongqing, next year.)

刘益谦吸了一口烟说：“我觉得我下半辈子和财产会花在美术馆上。”（他们打算明年在重庆市的西南部开设第三家博物馆。）

Cai Jinqing, president of Christie’s China, said the couple represented the “best example” of this generation of Chinese art collectors.

佳士得中国区总裁蔡金青说，这对夫妇是这一代中国艺术收藏家的“典范”。

“They started with collecting what they know, Chinese art, then broadened to Asian art, and are now embracing Western art,” Ms. Cai said.

蔡金青说：“他们从收藏自己熟悉的中国艺术品开始，然后扩展到亚洲艺术品，现在正在接受西方艺术。”

But few collectors in China publicly flaunt their wealth the way Mr. Liu and Ms. Wang do, particularly as the government wages a crackdown on extravagance. Mr. Liu, who is still an active stock trader, said he was not concerned about the crackdown, stating that he acquired his money through legal and legitimate means.

但是在中国，几乎没有哪位收藏家像刘益谦和王薇这样公开炫耀自己的财富，尤其在政府打压奢侈之时。刘益谦仍是一位活跃的股票操盘手。他说，他不担心那种打压，称自己的钱都是通过合法途径获得的。

Many have criticized the couple for profligacy and a perceived lack of taste. In discussions about them, the term “tuhao,” a popular Chinese term for crass nouveaux riches, is frequently tossed around.

很多人批评这对夫妇肆意挥霍，缺乏品位。在关于他们的讨论中，“土豪”这个词经常出现。

“I am definitely a tuhao,” Mr. Liu said defiantly. “But at least this tuhao is bringing a masterpiece back to China for the Chinese people to enjoy.” Mr. Liu said that he had no plans to sell the painting.

刘益谦轻蔑地说：“我是一个土豪。最起码，土豪把这座作品带回中国来了，不需要去国外看了。”刘益谦说他没打算卖掉这幅画。

There is another, more personal, benefit to the acquisition: airfare. Ms. Wang confirmed that, as in the past, she and Mr. Liu would be using their American Express card to pay for the Modigliani. That way, with the cardholder’s points they accrue, their whole family — the couple, their four children and two grandchildren — can continue flying for free.

购买这幅画还有一个更私人的益处：机票。王薇承认，和过去一样，她和刘益谦将使用他们的美国运通卡支付莫迪利亚尼油画的费用。那样的话，他们全家人——这对夫妇、四个孩子和两个孙子辈——都可以继续用卡上的积分免费乘坐飞机。

“We are on a one-year payment plan for the painting,” Ms. Wang said. “If we had to pay cash upfront, that would be a little difficult for us.”

王薇说：“那幅画我们是分期付款。用现金支付对我们来说还是比较紧张。”

She added: “I mean, who has the money for that?”

她补充说：“哪里有钱还能这样？”