Outstanding Current Exhibitions of Chinese Bronzes and Procelains

Abstract

European and English connoiseurship in Chinese art quite naturally began with the importation of handsome porcelains of the Kang Sh'i and Kien Lung periods of the 17th and 18th centuries, and gradually extended its interest to the early Ming and certain choice types of Sung and Yuan porcelains of the 12th and 13th centuries. American connoiseurship followed much the same course for a period of years. But within the last twenty years it has made striking progress in broadening its appreciation and we have learned that Buddhist sculpture of the Wei and T'ang dynasties and much of Chinese art that flourished between the fifth and eighth centuries is entitled to our profound consideration. What is true of those periods is also true of the culture of the earlier Han dynasty. But we have gone even further than this and in the past fifteen years a few collectors and such leaders among museums in Asiatic art as the Freer gallery, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Chicago Art Institute sought out superb examples of Chinese bronzes of the Chow dynasty (1122 B.C., 225 B.C.) the earliest extant records excepting a few bone carvings and jade and a very few bronzes of the preceding or Shang dynasty, we have of Chinese culture.