An author and specialist in Chinese art, this individual currently serves as the Curator in Charge of the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Their work focuses on the deep understanding and presentation of art objects. In this role, they offer valuable insights into the world of Chinese art. Their expertise is reflected in how they bring these artworks to a broader audience.
The Chinese often use the expression du hua, 'to read a painting', in connection with their study and appreciation of such works. This volume 'reads' thirty-six masterpieces of Chinese painting from the encyclopaedic collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to reveal the major characteristics and themes of this pictorial tradition.
Wang Hui, the most celebrated painter of late-17th-century China, played a key role both in reinvigorating past traditions of landscape painting and in establishing the stylistic foundations for the imperially sponsored art of the Qing court. An artist of protean talent and immense ambition, Wang developed an all-embracing synthesis of historical landscape styles that constituted one of the greatest artistic innovations of late imperial China. This comprehensive study of the painter’s career—the first published in English—features essays examining his life and achievement as well as his masterwork, the monumental scroll depicting the Kangxi emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour. Twenty-seven of Wang Hui’s paintings, drawn from the Metropolitan Museum and from museums in Beijing, Taipei, Shanghai, and Tokyo, are supplemented by a wealth of images ranging from ancient Chinese paintings to works by Wang’s contemporaries.