Part 2 from The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual (Jieziyuan huazhuan; Kaishien gaden) Wang Gai
Met Museum New York
Provenance: Purchase, Mary and James G. Wallach Foundation Gift, 2013
2013.747a–d
Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden (芥子園畫傳, Jieziyuan Huazhuan), sometimes known as Jieziyuan Huapu (芥子園畫譜), is a printed manual of Chinese painting compiled during the early-Qing Dynasty. Many renowned later Chinese painters, like Qi Baishi, began their drawing lessons with the manual. It is an important early example of colour printing.
The work was commissioned by Shen Xinyou (沈心友), son-in-law of the famous playwright Li Yu, whose mansion in Lanxi, Zhejiang province was known as Jieziyuan, or Mustard Seed Garden.
The first fascicle deals with the general principles of landscape painting, the second the painting of trees, the third that of hills and stones, the fourth that of people and houses, and the fifth comprises the selected works of great landscape painters. Two more parts, which deal with the painting of flora and fauna, were produced by Wang and his two brothers and published 1701.
An English translation of the work, The Tao of Painting – A study of the ritual disposition of Chinese painting. With a translation of the Chieh Tzu Yuan Hua Chuan or Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting 1679–1701, was made by Mai-mai Sze and published in New York in 1956.
[text source: @wikipedia]
Check out: more editions of the manual in the MET database online here.
