SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Telling Images of China is an exhibition of early modern and modern paintings from one of the world's finest collections of Chinese art, the Shanghai Museum. The thirty-eight figural works were selected by a team of curators, including Prof Shan Guolin and Mr Ling Lizhong of the Shanghai Museum, and Dr Shane McCausland of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, and include scrolls and albums by artists - both pre-eminent and obscure - active in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, and the twentieth century. Each of these narrative or 'story paintings' retells or illustrates some kind of tale from a source such as folk and religious lore, oral and official history, poetry and literature. The exhibition is mounted at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, in spring 2010.