Through A Chinese Connoisseur’s Eye

Essays by Kathleen Yang, 2010

C.C. Wang’s collection of private notes was written over a 40 year period, on paintings in the Palace Museum in Taipei and other collections he has studied. These detailed annotations open the door to the inner thoughts of a formidable collector, demonstrating his expertise and thought process as a connoisseur of Chinese literati painting. Included are paintings now housed in museums from his own collection, with the provenance and background of the nineteenth and twentieth-century Chinese collections.

Kathleen Yang was first introduced to C.C. Wang in 1962 by her mother, when he was asked to make an authoritative evaluation of three paintings belonging to the family. For three years, she consulted Wang weekly to ensure accuracy in the translation of his comments from Chinese to English for the publication of his private notes. Yang, a graduate of Harvard University, studied with C.C. Wang for many decades to understand the traditional connoisseurship of Chinese classical painting, a system that has existed for many centuries in China, where one’s knowledge is transmitted from mentor to mentee.