BOOK REVIEWS
135
The First 50 Years is not only a beautiful memento of the Jubilee Year but also an interesting first history of the University and a useful work of reference. More research is needed on certain subjects, such as the activities of graduates in China and in Southeast Asia as well as in the colony itself. I suspect that the University and the Medical College which preceded it, and such secondary schools as Central (later Queen's College) and Belilios, exercised more influence in China than is generally recognized. For that matter all of the contributions of Hong Kong to the modernization of China need study; many of these have not even been identified. When the definitive history of the University of Hong Kong is written, after considerably more research has been done, The First 50 Years will be one of the principal sources.
Cornell University
KNIGHT BIGGERSTAFF,
THE CHINESE ON THE ART OF PAINTING: TRANSLATIONS AND COMMENTS. Osvald Sirén. Schocken Books, New York, and Hong Kong University Press, 1963. 21 monochrome illustrations. H.K.$16. U.S.$1.95.
This book was first published by the firm of Henri Vetch in Peiping in 1936 and had long been out of print. It is excellent to see it available again, this time in a paper-back edition, printed on good paper, with reasonably wide margins, attractive print, and twenty-one extremely good black and white illustrations.
This book was a landmark in the study of Chinese painting in the West when it first appeared because it gave the reader, through translation and comment, a knowledge of the attitudes of Chinese painters to their craft throughout the centuries. Now it is again available to a new generation of readers who will be able to discover what the Chinese themselves have said about the art of painting. It contains extracts in translation from Kuo Hsi's famous Shan Shui Hsün (“Comments on Landscape"), put together by his son who gives us a vivid picture of his father's method in the following passage: "On the days when he was going to paint (he would place himself) at a bright window before a clean table and burned incense right and left. He took a fine
BOOK REVIEWS
135
The First 50 Years is not only a beautiful memento of the Jubilee Year but also an interesting first history of the University and a useful work of reference. More research is needed on certain subjects, such as the activities of graduates in China and in Southeast Asia as well as in the colony itself. I suspect that the University and the Medical College which preceded it, and such secondary schools as Central (later Queen's College) and Belilios, exercised more influence in China than is generally recognized. For that matter all of the contributions of Hong Kong to the modernization of China need study; many of these have not even been identified. When the definitive history of the University of Hong Kong is written, after considerably more research has been done, The First 50 Years will be one of the principal sources.
Cornell University
KNIGHT BIGGERSTAFF,
THE CHINESE ON THE ART OF PAINTING: TRANSLA- TIONS AND COMMENTS. Osvald Sirén. Schocken Books, New York, and Hong Kong University Press, 1963. 21 mono- chrome illustrations. H.K.$16. U.S.$1.95.
This book was first published by the firm of Henri Vetch in Peiping in 1936 and had long been out of print. It is excellent to see it available again, this time in a paper-back edition, printed on good paper, with reasonably wide margins, attractive print, and twenty-one extremely good black and white illustrations.
This book was a landmark in the study of Chinese painting in the West when it first appeared because it gave the reader, through translation and comment, a knowledge of the attitudes of Chinese painters to their craft throughout the centuries. Now it is again available to a new generation of readers who will be able to discover what the Chinese themselves have said about the art of painting. It contains extracts in translation from Kuo Hsi's famous Shan Shui Hsün (“Comments on Landscape"), put together by his son who gives us a vivid picture of his father's method in the following passage: "On the days when he was going to paint (he would place himself) at a bright window before a clean table and burned incense right and left. He took a fine
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