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The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the C. C. Wang Family Collection
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Riverbank. Attributed to Dong Yuan (act. 930s–960s). Hanging scroll; ink and slight color on silk; 87 x 43 in. (221 x 109 cm). Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family. Promised Gift of the Oscar L. Tang Family (L.1997.24.1).
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More about the Collection of C. C. Wang
The collection of C. C. Wang is a unique historical achievement, encompassing many masterpieces dispersed from the Qing imperial collection early in this century. The collection is richest in paintings of the 10th through the 14th century, including Northern Song (960–1126) monumental landscapes, figural narratives and elegant album-size paintings sponsored by the Southern Song court (1127–1279), and the full sweep of scholar painting from its inception in the 10th and 11th centuries to its early flowering during the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368). Beginning with Riverbank, attributed to the 10th-century patriarch of the scholar-painting landscape tradition, Dong Yuan, the exhibition documented the development of a scholarly landscape style with examples by Song artists Zhao Lingrang (active ca. 1070), Li Gonglin (ca. 1041–1106), and Mi Youren (1074–1151), and continued with multiple examples by virtually every leading landscape painter of the Yuan period, including Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), Wu Zhen (1280–1354), Ni Zan (1306–1374), and Wang Meng (ca. 1308–1385).
The Song courtly tradition was equally well represented, beginning with the anonymous late-10th- to early-11th-century masterpiece "Palace Banquet" and major narrative works by Li Tang (ca. 1070s–ca. 1150s) and Ma Hezhi (active ca. 1130-ca. 1170), and culminating with 15 keenly observed images of gardens, flowers, and birds by members of the Southern Song Imperial Painting Academy, notably Ma Yuan (active ca. 1190–1225) and his son Ma Lin (ca. 1180–after 1256).
The continuation of both the scholarly and courtly traditions during the Ming and Qing dynasties was also well represented, including an especially rich concentration of works by individualist and orthodox masters of the 17th century, with masterpieces by the individualists Zhu Da (Bada Shanren, 1626–1705) and Shitao (1642–1707), and by the orthodox painters Wu Li (1632–1717) and Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715).
The Wang collection epitomizes the distinctly Chinese scholarly tradition of combining collecting with creativity. Mr. Wang, an accomplished artist, acquired works of art as a way of learning from the past. To illustrate the important role that collecting has played as a source of inspiration and instruction in Mr. Wang's work, the exhibition concluded with ten of his own paintings and calligraphies dating from 1937 to the present.
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