The Chester Beatty Library is presenting a major exhibition of thirty-eight paintings from one of the world’s finest collections of Chinese art, the Shanghai Museum. The exhibition includes scrolls and albums by artists active in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties and the early Republican period after 1912. Each of these ‘story paintings’ retells or illustrates a tale from folk and religious lore, oral and official history, poetry or literature. The exhibition is presented through four sometimes overlapping, sometimes interweaving themes, namely ‘crossings’ – stories about exiles, loyalists and rustics; the supernatural world of popular religion; models and exemplars in history; and finally, emperor-concubine and scholar-beauty romances. The exhibition will be available to the public from February 12 through May 2, 2010.
