Comprising 130 paintings created during the 17th century, the Jung Ying Tsao Collection is singularly comprehensive, including works by nearly all of the most important Chinese painters of the period. It offers contemporary audiences an appreciation of the enormous influence of these artists, who virtually rewrote the history of Chinese painting. This book features sixteen works by Dong Qichang, the most protean Chinese painter of the last 500 years, paintings by masters such as Gong Xian, Hongren, Zhu Da, Daoji, Wang Hui and Wang Yuangi, as well as extremely rare works by lesser known artists, scholars, officials and Buddhist monks. Divided into sections that encompass both the late Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty, this volume also includes fascinating essays on a number of themes, such as the function of landscape in Chinese culture; the political uses of painting in 17th-century China; the relationship of Chinese painting to poetry; Buddhist, Daoist and neo-Confucian themes; and orthodoxy and painting of the era. Rounding out the volume are new and authoritative interpretations of the Tsao Collection written by a team of leading scholars and remarkable new translations by Jonathan Chaves and Ronald Egan of the Chinese poems and prose texts inscribed on the paintings and calligraphic works in the exhibition. AUTHOR: Stephen Little is Florence and Harry Sloan Curator of Chinese Art and Head of the Chinese and Korean Art Departments at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Wan Kong is the Tsao Research Fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum 300 images
