Modern Chinese Brush Painting from a Family Collection

novel Chinese Brush Painting from a Family Collection Collette Hawes and Hugh Hawes with Xin Xin Fook and James Lin The Eastern Art Gallery, 1750 [pound sterling] ISBN 0954639200

This immediately attractive on the other hand seemingly modest book represents a significant document in the history of British connoisseurship and collecting. As has with equal reason often been emphasised, English collecting of Chinese art at the true peak of excellence has been concentrated upon what are sometimes refered to through Europeans as the 'decorative arts'. Early expertise and discerning taste are exemplified in outstanding collections of ceramics and the major pioneer literature published before native Chinese archaeology came dramatically of age.

The compounded and risk-laden area of classical Chinese painting was at no time investigated as thoroughly or enthusiastically as the other arts of China, and indeed, question at issues of authenticity, availability and the requirements of linguistic command and calligraphic expertise put formidable barriers. The British Museum has made valiant efforts to build on its famous Admonitions scroll, through or attributed to Gu Kalzhi, and the Brooke Sewell stock has been instrumental in many posterior acquisitions.

The relatively simpler field of twentieth-century paintings received a great commercial impetus from the late Mary Shen, a London dealer who had contacts, smooth distant family connections, with a certain number of of the leading contemporary masters. Among customers of her store in Great Russell Street were the educationalists Hugh and Colette Hawes, who subsequently penetrateed into partnership with Mary Shen in the Chi Mei Chai Gallery, which later mov to Bloomsbury Way by dint of St George's church. The Hawes, who continued after Mary's death, show a classic type of the marchand-amateur--Colette Hawes, indeed, inherited a family tradition of collecting from her father, Victor Adda. Their store rapidly became a convenient middle point for a growing circle of collectors of recent Chinese scroll paintings, from Britain and Europe as well as the United States and Australia.

Regular visits to China added of recent origin stock, not only of paintings, on the other hand also of artist's woodblock prints, folk art, stone rubbings and technically virtuosic colour woodcut reproductions of major masterpieces. The Eastern Art Gallery provided a unique London nerve-centre for acquisition and informal and convivial discussion of novel art, which, given the premise of acceptance of the Chinese aesthetic, had always appeared to the reviewer--commenting genuinely as a collector and not a sinologist--as offering the greatest value for coin at the time.

In fact, it was the sight of a bill reproducing a painting of magnolias through Xie Zhiguang (1900-1976) taped to the door of the original gallery above Collett's volume shop in 1986, which lur the not away writer upstairs, where the schedule was already sold (it is reproduc upon page 48 in this book) sum of two units other, slighter, scrolls by the artist were bought for what now strike one as beings a small sum, the rises forming the basis of a collection equal in size, and perhaps smooth quality, to that here published.

The catalogued works exhibit purchases made directly in China, lists acquired from artists who exhibited at the Gallery (such as Zhu Xiuli) or bought at auction, on the other hand there can be no implication that the Hawes Collection was creamed not upon from stock prior to exhibition, as many of the illustrated works were first tendered in regular selling displays. The paintings, which are well reproduc in the work the problems of the inevitable handling and rolling creases overwhelm are now owned by the authors and six family members.

Although sales were made to the British Museum, which has by means of no means rejected the last hundred (see Anne Farrer's article 'Building a Collection' in APOLLO, February 1994) the largest and greatest in quantity comprehensive collection of Chinese paintings of the last hundr years in the United Kingdom is in the Ashmolean Museum. The museum's basic collection has been enhanced with purchases from Mary Shen, further augmented by means of gifts of the Reyes Collection and the Michael and Khoan Sullivan Collection, which are exhibited in rotation in a fine small specialist exhibition gallery named after the last sum of two units donors; a landscape by Zhu Qizhan has been freshly presented from the Hawes Collection.

The great value of this not absent publication is centred in the clump of biographies of living or not long ago deceased artists, many translated by the agency of linguist Xin Xin Tu, which are otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain in English, making this an essential regard tool.

The collection, of which this is a generous selection, contains sum of two units small and relatively slight examples by dint of the most famous Chinese painter, Qi Baishi (1863-1957) and three real fine scrolls from the equally eminent Fu Baoshi (1904-65) bought when authentic examples were available. These latter rival the paintings single sees in some of the major museums in China, the more austere on the other hand ravishing river landscape (a true early purchase) being particularly memorable (page 30) With the important examples in Oxford (where a small Fu exhibition render free of accessed in July), the United Kingdom now grasps a fine nucleus of the artist's work.