Letter to C.T. Feng

In 1941, the artist and activist Xu Beihong was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he was tirelessly attempting to raise funds for the Chinese war effort against Japan. This letter, written on August 12 of that year to the diplomat C.T. Feng (Feng Zhizheng 馮執正), who was at the time serving as China’s Consul General in San Francisco, touches on Xu’s plan to come to the States later that year to mount an exhibition of modern Chinese paintings to support the fundraising drive. This letter was preserved in C.T. Feng’s archives, and it remained in the Feng family until its donation to the Met.

The current letter relates closely to another series of letters written by Xu in The Met Collection; see his Seventeen letters (2005.509.12). While Xu’s dream of mounting exhibitions of modern Chinese painting in the United States was ultimately realized, including an inaugural exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum in 1943, Xu himself was never able to travel to this country.