A Study On The Collection Of Art In Beijing In The Early 20th Century

The early 20th century was an important transformative period and it is so for connoisseurship and collecting of art in Beijing. Due to invasion of foreign enemies, and internal turbulence, many art objects flowed from the collections of the top echelon. Railroad construction caused many buried art objects appear. So the art market boomed. The introduction of photography and new printing technology advanced the popularization of connoisseurship of art objects. Exhibitions and museums make art treasures accessible to the general public. In the early Republican Peking, there were many exhibitions usually for charity purposes. There were not only art objects loaned from local collectors but also some art objects from the Imperial collections. The establishment of the Palace Museum made the imperial collections accumulated for a few huandred years available to the general public. Art treasures that used to be in the private space of the elite became accessisble to the general public.In the early years of the 20th century, America became the center of the world economy. With urbanlization,industrialization and rise of the large middele class, museums mushroomed in America. Europe declined in the early 20th century due to the destruction of world wars. So America became major overseas market for Chinese art objects. At the beginning of the first world war, the most prominent Chinese art dealer C. T. Loo moved from Paris to New York. In the early years of the 20th century, Japan played a role of intermediary in promoting Chinese art in the West. The English edition of the Kokka was read by Western collectors of Chinese Art. Okakura Kakuzo collected Chinese art treasures for MFA Boston. The Beijing-based John Calvin Fergsuon wrote three monographs and many articles in English to promote the Chinese tradition of connoisseurship and collecting in the West. George Kates promoted Chinese Classical furniture in the West with his book on the subject. Exhibitions of Chinese art held in Tokyo and London had tremendous impact and many of the art objects shown at the exhibitions were loaned from Beijing. Imperialism and colonialism caused lots of art treasures move out of China.Foreign connoisseurs and collectors first paid serious attention to the artistic value of Chinese sculpture, architecture and classical furniture. Western tradition long held sculpture as part of high art,but Chinese tradition never regarded sculpture as part of high art. Some Westerners in Beijing were influenced by the Bauhaus school of architecture and appreciated the elegance of austerity of Chinese Classical furniture. Gustav Ecke and George Kates first wrote on the subject. Chen Mengjia and Wang Shixiang were influenced by Gustav Ecke and began collecting Chinese classical furniture and studied the subject.The Swedish scholar of Chinese art history, Osvald Siren’s works on Chinese Art had tremendous impact on the West. An American teacher who taught at Yenching University, Goerge Robert Loehr began looking into Giuseppe Castiglione’s early life and work in Europe and advanced the connoisseurship of Giuseppe Castiglione. Imported ideas like nationalism prompted the Chinese to protect their own cultural heritage and Pan-East-Asianism prompted the Sino-Japanese paintings exhibitions held in Beijing and Tokyo,but unfortunately, later it was used as a tool for Japanese imperialists and colonists.Since many Japanese had good understanding of traditional Chinese culture, so numerous Japanese connoisseurs and collectors associated with the art world in Beijing. They included the Sinologist Naito Konan, the editor-in-chief of the Kokka, Taki Seiichi, the art dealer Yamanaka Sadajiro and the curator for Chinese and Japanese art at MFA Boston. Some Americans were also linked to the art world in Beijing, and they included the first big Western collector who set Chinese paintings as his collecting priority, Charles Lang Freer and the American collector who lived in Beijing, John Calvin Ferguson and the big art dealer C. T. Loo and the representive of the younger genegration of connoisseurs who built the Chinese art collections at the Neslson-Akins Museum of Art, Laurence Sickman.Although Europe was heavily affected by two world wars, Eurpean sinology was still high respected and there were a few big connoisseurs of Chinese art. One of them was Paul Pelliot, the French sinologist. Osvald Siren and Gustav Ecke were among them. Most of them did associate with connoisseurs,collectors, scholars and literati in Beijing. There was an aspect of robbing China of its art treasures but also had an aspect of cultural exchange and it was a complex picture in modern Chinese cultural history.