香港大學美術博物館

The University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG) of the University of Hong Kong presents the Chinese painting exhibition Tradition to Contemporary: Ink Painting and Artistic Development in 20th-century China. The exhibition is curated from artworks within the museum’s permanent collection. Works trace the evolution of ink painting in Hong Kong, and include many of the masters that have helped to build the city’s art scene and museum collections. The exhibition and its associated catalogue offers audiences a broad overview of the provenance and aesthetic quality of individual works, and the cultural interactions among twentieth-century Chinese artists, curators, collectors and scholars in Hong Kong, mainland China and abroad. It makes reference to individuals and their networks, to teacher-student relationships and to the generosity of the numerous painters who have helped UMAG to grow the museum’s holdings, and whose work constitutes the foundation of UMAG’s educational work today. Since

This publication accompanies an unprecedented exhibition highlighting four of the magnificent chinoiserie tapestries of Chinese Emperor Qianlong, woven after designs by François Boucher at the famous Beauvais manufactory from 1758–1760. The large and well-preserved textiles form part of the royal French commission by King Louis XV, objects of which were presented to Qianlong in 1766. These celebrated tapestries are joined by another historic set of culturally related depictions in print—The Battles of the Emperor of China. The engravings were ordered by Qianlong, drawn by Jesuit painters at the Imperial Court in Beijing and then printed in Paris 1769–1774. The ‘culture’ of these prints follows King Louis XIV’s influential images of the Histoire du Roi and presents Qianlong as both a war hero and as the undisputed leader of China in the mid-eighteenth century. These depictions date to the exact same time period, one that coincides with the high demand for chinoiserie in France—culmina