This publication celebrates the promised gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Oscar Tang family of twelve major works from the C. C. Wang Family Collection, one of the great private collections of Chinese old master paintings to be assembled in the twentieth century. Ranging in date from the tenth to the early eighteenth century, these works significantly extend the Museum's holdings and reveal those areas of Chinese painting of particular interest to Mr. Wang. An accomplished artist, Ch'i-ch'ien Wang, a resident of New York City since 1949, began collecting paintings in Shanghai more than seventy years ago.
Among the twelve paintings presented here is the famed Riverbank, attributed to the tenth-century master Dong Yuan (active 930s-60s), one of the patriarchs of the scholarly Southern school of landscape painting. An essay by Wen C. Fong presents an in-depth stylistic analysis and contextual history of the painting. A physical analysis of the work is also included.
An extended essay by Maxwell K. Hearn examines all twelve paintings.