Chinese Painting Connoisseurship

Authenticity is critical to connoisseurship and to writing reliable art history. This course is an introduction to masterpieces of Chinese painting and the methods and technologies used to create copies, variations, and imitations. Throughout dynastic China, painters copied fine paintings as a way to learn their trade. Collectors invited accomplished painters to copy damaged paintings to preserve a composition or to refresh their collections. When copies, whether student exercises or meticulous facsimiles, make their way into the marketplace, the original style of an artist is muddled. This problem is further compounded by artists who produced paintings for profit and dealers who altered the signatures and paratexts of paintings to increase their value.

Students will take turns leading seminar discussions to analyze the readings, based in part on the questions that each student will submit the night before the seminar. We will study masterpieces and lesser works in several collections including the Brooklyn Museum, The Freer Gallery, the Metropolitan, Princeton University Art Museum, and Yale Art Museum, with field trips to two of these institutions.