A village in southern China is dedicated to churning out thousands of paintings, and they're all legal copies.

Works by Da Vinci, Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso are painstakingly hand-copied by skilled artists in Da Fen, just across the border from Hong Kong.

Internationally, China is often castigated for the high volume of counterfeit goods it produces.

But in the art village, everybody knows the Rembrandts and other masterpieces are fake.

And it's legal, because under Chinese law, anything over 50 years old falls into the public domain.

Since a Hong Kong businessman started Da Fen village two decades ago, business has soared.

"We've gone from just a dozen shops to more than 700 businesses … some of them employ several thousand artists," Wang Zitao, owner of one of many art production shops, told CBC News.

Wang's shop produces works quickly, with his painters churning out famous British landscapes by Turner and Constable one day, and turning to different artists the following day.

"All my painters are graduates of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts," he said.

In fact, Da Fen provides a way for young artists to make a living, while they hope for a breakthrough in their own careers.

Want own work recognized

Artist Wayne Fu, 26, says he likes painting Dali, O'Keefe and Picasso.

"In Dafen, all over here we can copy maybe 100 million copies every year!" he said.

But his real hope is for a Da Fen style to emerge and for his own work, which he does on the side, to get recognized.

Not all the art is European classics — abstracts by contemporary artists are also reproduced, as are traditional Chinese paintings.

And there are plenty of paintings of Elvis and Shakira created in the four-square-kilomere village, which creates art as its sole business.

Orders for ersatz masterpieces come in from North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia, and they hang in hotels, banks and office lobbies.

With files from Anthony Germain