Transcriber’s Note: There is one instance each of:Huang Yin-Piau and Huang Yin-Piao, andYün Shou-p’ing and Yün Chou-p’ingso they have been left as printed.
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CHINESE PAINTERS
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CHINESE PAINTERS
A CRITICAL STUDY
BY
RAPHAEL PETRUCCI
TRANSLATED BY
FRANCES SEAVER
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE BY
LAURENCE BINYON
of the british museum
AND WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN DUOTONE
NEW YORK
BRENTANO’S
PUBLISHERS
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COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
BRENTANO’S
All rights reserved
THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
NORWOOD · MASS · U·S·A
PREFACE
A translator can have but one aim—to present the thought of the authorfaithfully. In this case an added responsibility is involved, since onewho had so much to give to the world has been taken in his prime. M.Petrucci has written at length of art in the Far East in his exhaustivework La Philosophie de la Nature dans l’Art d’Extrême Orient andelsewhere, and has demonstrated the wide scope of his thought andlearning. The form and style in Peintres Chinois are the result of muchcondensation of material and have thus presented problems in translation,to which earnest thought has been given.
In deference to the author’s wish the margin has not been overladen andonly a short tribute, by one able to speak of him from personal knowledge,has been included, together with a few footnotes and a short bibliographyof works of reference indispensable to the student who will pursue thisabsorbing study. The translator takes this opportunity to make gratefulacknowledgement of her debt to the authors named, who have made suchvaluable information available, and to those friends who have read themanuscript and made many helpful suggestions.
Frances Seaver
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
In Raphael Petrucci, who died early in 1917, the world has lost one of theablest and most devoted students and interpreters of the art of the FarEast. He was only forty-five years of age, in the prime of his powers,brimming with energy and full of enterprises that promised richly. Thoughhe did not die in the field, he was none the less a victim of the war. Hehad exhausted himself by his labours with the Belgian ambulances at LaPanne, for Belgium was his adopted country. He had a house in Brussels,filled with a collection of Chinese and Japanese art, and a little cottagenear the coast just over the borders of Holland. He came of the great andancient Sienese family of the Petrucci, but his mother was French and hespent much of his earlier life in Paris, before settling in Brussels andmarrying one of the daughters of the painter Verwée. He had also spentsome time in Russia. In Brussels he was attached to the Institut Solvay.
He was a man of science, a student of and writer on sociology and biolo