Ke Jiusi, Bamboo, Yuan dynasty, 1271–1368, hanging scroll; ink on paper, National Palace Museum, Taipei. Image © National Palace Museum

Presented by author Kathleen Yang

Kathleen Yang, a native of Shanghai, lived in Hong Kong before she came to the United States to study at Radcliffe College. In 1962, her mother introduced Yang to the famed collector and connoisseur C.C. Wang to ask for authoritative evaluation of several paintings belonging to the family. This encounter was the initiation of Yang’s life-long interest in Chinese literati paintings. She studied with Wang for many decades—a practice that has existed in China for centuries, through which one’s knowledge is transmitted from a mentor to his students—to understand the traditional connoisseurship of Chinese literati paintings.

Wang took notes on paintings of the Imperial Collection at Taipei in 1959, 1963, and the 1990s for his own personal use. In the late 1990s, he asked Yang to translate his notes from Chinese into English for publication, and she spent three years consulting him on a weekly basis from year 2000 to 2003 to ensure accuracy of the information as well as C.C. Wang ’s criteria used in his rating of the paintings. She spent 11 years to work on English and Chinese versions of the book, titled Through a Chinese Connoisseur’s Eye: Private Notes of CC Wang, published by Zhonghua Shuju in Beijing in 2010. She joins us for this talk to celebrate the exhibition Emperors’ Treasures: Chinese Art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei.