Modern Chinese Brush Painting from a Family Collection

Modern Chinese Brush Painting from a Family Collection Collette Hawes and Hugh Hawes with Xin Xin Fooks and James Lin The Eastern Art Gallery, 17.50 [pounds sterling] ISBN 0954639200

This immediately attractive but seemingly modest book represents a significant document in the history of British connoisseurship and collecting. As has so often been emphasised, English collecting of Chinese art at the very peak of excellence has been concentrated on what are sometimes refered to by Europeans as the 'decorative arts'. Early expertise and discerning taste are exemplified in outstanding collections of ceramics and the major pioneer literature published before native Chinese archaeology came dramatically of age.

The complex and risk-laden area of classical Chinese painting was never investigated as thoroughly or enthusiastically as the other arts of China, and indeed, problems of authenticity, availability and the requirements of linguistic command and calligraphic expertise set formidable barriers. The British Museum has made valiant efforts to build upon its famous Admonitions scroll, by or attributed to Gu Kalzhi, and the Brooke Sewell Fund has been instrumental in many subsequent acquisitions.

The relatively simpler field of twentieth-century paintings received a great commercial impetus from the late Mary Shen, a London dealer who had contacts, even distant family connections, with some of the leading contemporary masters. Among customers of her shop in Great Russell Street were the educationalists Hugh and Colette Hawes, who subsequently entered into partnership with Mary Shen in the Chi Mei Chai Gallery, which later moved to Bloomsbury Way by St George's church. The Hawes, who continued after Mary's death, represent a classic type of the marchand-amateur--Colette Hawes, indeed, inherited a family tradition of collecting from her father, Victor Adda. Their shop rapidly became a convenient centre for a growing circle of collectors of modern Chinese scroll paintings, from Britain and Europe as well as the United States and Australia.

Regular visits to China added new stock, not only of paintings, but also of artist's woodblock prints, folk art, stone rubbings and technically virtuosic colour woodcut reproductions of major masterpieces. The Eastern Art Gallery provided a unique London nerve-centre for acquisition and informal and convivial discussion of recent art, which, given the premise of acceptance of the Chinese aesthetic, had always appeared to the reviewer--commenting purely as a collector and not a sinologist--as offering the greatest value for money at the time.

In fact, it was the sight of a poster reproducing a painting of magnolias by Xie Zhiguang (1900-1976) taped to the door of the original gallery above Collett's book shop in 1986, which lured the present writer upstairs, where the scroll was already sold (it is reproduced on page 48 in this book). Two other, slighter, scrolls by the artist were bought for what now seems a small sum, the results forming the basis of a collection equal in size, and perhaps even quality, to that here published.

The catalogued works represent purchases made directly in China, scrolls acquired from artists who exhibited at the Gallery (such as Zhu Xiuli) or bought at auction, but there can be no implication that the Hawes Collection was creamed off from stock prior to exhibition, as many of the illustrated works were first offered in regular selling displays. The paintings, which are well reproduced in the book, the problems of the inevitable handling and rolling creases overcome, are now owned by the authors and six family members.

Although sales were made to the British Museum, which has by no means rejected the last century (see Anne Farrer's article 'Building a Collection' in APOLLO, February 1994), the largest and most comprehensive collection of Chinese paintings of the last hundred years in the United Kingdom is in the Ashmolean Museum. The museum's basic collection has been enhanced with purchases from Mary Shen, further augmented by gifts of the Reyes Collection and the Michael and Khoan Sullivan Collection, which are exhibited in rotation in a fine small specialist exhibition gallery named after the last two donors; a landscape by Zhu Qizhan has been recently presented from the Hawes Collection.

The great value of this present publication is centred in the group of biographies of living or recently deceased artists, many translated by linguist Xin Xin Tu, which are otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain in English, making this an essential reference tool.

The collection, of which this is a generous selection, contains two small and relatively slight examples by the most famous Chinese painter, Qi Baishi (1863-1957), and three very fine scrolls from the equally eminent Fu Baoshi (1904-65), bought when authentic examples were available. These latter rival the paintings one sees in some of the major museums in China, the more austere but ravishing river landscape (a very early purchase) being particularly memorable (page 30). With the important examples in Oxford (where a small Fu exhibition opened in July), the United Kingdom now holds a fine nucleus of the artist's work.