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untitled , date unknown

Portfolio/Series title: Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting

Where object was made: China

Material/technique: woodcut

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 258.8 x 321.9 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 10 3/16 x 12 11/16 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 14 x 19 in

Credit line: Gift of Mrs. Arthur S. Johnson (The May Finney Marcy Collection)

Accession number: 1964.0085

Not on display

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Exhibition Label:
“Transformations,” Feb-2006, Mary Dusenbury and Alison Miller
These woodcut prints are pages from the Jie ze yuan hua zhuan or Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, a woodcut manual originally published by Li Yu in Nanjing between 1679 and 1701. These woodcuts are from Part III, Book 12, the section on “Feathers-and-Fur and Flowering Plants,” probably edited by Wang Gai’s brother, Wang Shih. The purpose of the production was to help artists develop their abilities through studying the text and copying the woodcut copies of paintings. Copying the paintings of the masters - with a meticulous attention to the type and quality of the brushstrokes - was a traditional form of training in East Asia. A woodcut edition of models of past styles made this method of study available to a wide range of amateur painters as well as aspiring artists, including those without direct access to a painting collection.
The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting was reprinted many times and used as a copybook by generations of painters in China, Korea and Japan. Most recently these well-worn pages served as the starting point for Yoonmi Nam’s painting of birds.