Lives of the Imperial Painters: Chinese Biographies in Translation

FAIN: FA-52418-06

Amy E. McNair
University of Kansas, Lawrence (Lawrence, KS 66045-7505)

I propose to translate the “Catalogue of the Imperial Painting Collection in the Proclaiming Harmony Era,” a twelfth-century Chinese text that presents a vivid snapshot of a legendary lost art collection, profiles the lives of 231 painters and reveals the aesthetic and social values of its patron, the artist-emperor Song Huizong (r. 1101-25). A translation of these third- through twelfth-century painters’ biographies offers factual information about the lives and practices of medieval artists and contributes to the study of biography as a genre and its relation to the social construction of knowledge, as well as to the history of Chinese painting and aesthetics, and the workings of art, politics and religion at the imperial court of China.

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