Six siècles de peinture chinoise (Six Centuries of Chinese Painting)
Edited by Éric Lefebvre
Thursday 01 January 2009
Broché
ISBN : 978-2-7596-0075-5
224 pages
200 illustrations
The works that Henri Cernuschi brought back from Asia in 1873 mirror the European connoisseurs’ earliest perception of Chinese painting. They make up the heart of a collection of ancient paintings, reproduced here for the first time, following a 15-year period of restoration.
The Cernuschi Museum’s collection provides a glimpse of the work of numerous painters of imperial China, active in lettered circles during the Ming era (1368-1644) or at the court of the Qing emperors (1644-1911). Thanks to the museum’s ties with artists since the 1940s, the collection is primarily associated, however, with the great names that have forged the history of 20th-century Chinese painting. These works, reflections of a republican China (1911-1949) agitated by historic transformations and impacted by modernity, also reveal the lives of artists who were drawn to the West, and who chose Paris as their creative playground.
This book brings together an ensemble of 120 paintings presented by Éric Lefebvre, chief curator and director of the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Cernuschi Museum.