Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Old Man
Wang Shuyi Chinese
Not on view
This vivid portrait of a pensive old man demonstrates Wang Shuyi’s mastery of Western-style wood engraving. Using Western copperplate instruments on the side grain of the wood, he created finer details and more textural variations than conventional woodcut techniques would have achieved. The old man’s skin, textured through fine cross-hatching, is exemplary of his ingenious experiment.
Self-taught in the art of printmaking in the mid-1930s, Wang Shuyi later joined the All-China Woodcut Artist Association for Resistance during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), active mostly in his native Guizhou Province. He continued to make woodblock prints through the 1940s.
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