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BOOK REVIEWS
Chapter XIV: "The Nineteenth century: Looking Backward and Forward", is mainly a discussion of the landscape paintings of the 19th century, represented by Ch'ien Tu (1763-1844) and Tai Hsi (1801-1860).
Chapter XV: "Bird-and-flower painting: The end of a tradition”, five artists of the Ming Dynasty; Lu Chih, Hsiang Yuan-pien (1525-1590), Chou Chieh-mien (act. 1580-1610), Chang Hung, and Sun K’o-hung (1532-1610), and two artists from the Ch'ing Dynasty; Hua Yen (1682-after 1755) and the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi (1835-1908) form key figures for discussion.
The merits of this book are shown, first of all, by a detailed chronology of the artists of the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties. This point can be clearly seen if the chronologies of the same group of artists as they appear in other writings on history of Chinese painting are compared with those in Prof. Li's new publication. In order to make this point clear, a concordance table about the chronology of many artists is provided below.*
The second merit of this book seems to be a new use of old editorial principles practised in Chinese historical writings. As stated, Volume I consists of 15 chapters. In every chapter, a detailed study of each picture is always preceded by an introductory essay. The origin for presenting such an essay in a descriptive catalogue, when old writings on Chinese painting are studied, can be traced back at least to the early 12th century work, Hsuan-ho hua-p'u *1#," a descriptive catalogue about paintings, in Emperor Sung Hui-tsung's imperial collection, the Ming Hua Lu ***;14 and also to "Records of History of painting in the Ming Dynasty", edited by Hsü Hsin in late 17th century, both edited according to this principle. In the former, the subject-matter of Chinese painting is classified by the anonymous editor into 10 categories; and in the latter, into 15 subdivisions. Using modern concepts to review Hsuan-ho hua-p'u and Ming hua-lu, each category in these two historical documents should evidently be read as an independent chapter. More significantly, introductory essays, no matter whether long or short, are always addressed to each chapter-like category.
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