Robert van. Chinese Pictorial Art as Viewed by the Connoisseur Notes on the Means and Methods of Traditional Chinese Connoisseurship of Pictorial Art, Based Upon a Study of the Art of Mounting Scrolls

by GULIK

£750 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

GULIK, Robert van. Chinese Pictorial Art as Viewed by the Connoisseur Notes on the Means and Methods of Traditional Chinese Connoisseurship of Pictorial Art, Based Upon a Study of the Art of Mounting Scrolls in China and Japan. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente . 1958. 4to. Publisher’s red cloth, lettered and ruled in gilt to boards and spine; illustrated dust jacket with woodcut seal and calligraphy by the author; pp. xxxvii, frontispiece, [3], 537, [1 (blank)], with 160 plates; cloth pocket to rear pastedown containing the original supplementary booklet (12 pages) with 42 mounted samples of Japanese and Chinese paper; jacket torn and chipped with old repair reinforced by a paper backing to the reverse, corners and spine slightly bumped, foxing to prelims and edges of text block, light occasional foxing internally; previous bookseller’s label to rear endpaper; very good; ownership signature of Sherman E. Lee in black ink to upper left corner of front pastedown (see below). First edition of Van Gulik’s “magnum opus”, no. 518 of 950 copies, complete with the rarely retained booklet of Japanese and Chinese paper samples. “Thus appeared at last what I consider my magnum opus on Chinese pictorial art, which I had been working on since 1940”. A scholar of Chinese history and visual culture, Van Gulik devoted decades to the study of the aesthetics and materials of East Asian painting. His deep engagement with these traditions also informed his own artistic pra

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.