A Millennium of Chinese Painting: Masterpieces from the Permanent Collection

This installation, including more than eighty works from the permanent collection, features a number of the Museum's most outstanding masterpieces. The selection, which ranges from the eighth-century portrait of the imperial charger Night-Shining White, attributed to Han Gan (active 742–56), to works by the modern master Zhang Daqian (1899–1983), includes superb examples of early figure painting, Song dynasty (960–1279) monumental landscapes, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Chan (Zen) Buddhist meditation images, and calligraphic paintings by Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) scholar-artists. A full range of works by literati and court painters of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) is displayed, including a rare pair of late-Ming portraits of an eighty-five-year-old gentleman and his wife, which have recently been restored. Qing dynasty (1644–1911) Individualist and Orthodox School masters, two areas of particular strength in the Museum's collection, are richly represented. The installation concludes with the transformation of Qing traditions by artists of the modern period.