Jung Ying Tsao (Chinese: 曹仲英; pinyin: Cáo Zhòngyīng; 1929–2011) was a connoisseur, collector, dealer, and scholar of traditional Chinese art.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]

Tsao has been publicly recognized by the World Congress of Chinese Collectors as the leading American collector of Chinese painting of his generation.[1][2] Over his almost 50-year professional career based in the San Francisco Bay Area, he built and helped to build several important collections of Chinese painting, and was friends with significant figures in the Chinese art world. He authored a number of scholarly works on Chinese painting and calligraphy, and collections he assembled have been the subjects of research and exhibition projects by major museums, art academies, and publishing houses.

Biography

Tsao was born in Tianjin, China, in 1929[note 1] to a prominent family that became aligned with China's Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang.[3][4] His father was named Cao Wenming.[4] In his early years, due to the Chinese Civil War he migrated to Western China, then returned to the North, and finally in 1949, emigrated to Taiwan (Republic of China) to escape the Chinese Communist Revolution.[3][4] In the 1950s, he managed his family's collection of Chinese paintings and studied Chinese painting connoisseurship under noted art authority Li Lin-ts'an, senior curator at the National Palace Museum (Taipei).[4] He attended law school in Taipei and became a lawyer, then a judge.[3][4] In 1963 he traveled to the United States and settled in Berkeley, California.[4] Soon thereafter he gave up the practice of law; he became a professional art dealer in the mid-1960s, establishing the art gallery Fine East Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1974, and dedicating the remainder of his life to the preservation and promotion of traditional Chinese art.[3][4][5][6][7][8]

Projects and collections

Although his family's collection of Chinese paintings included earlier works, Tsao, while living in Taipei in the 1950s, began to re-focus the collection on more recent artists, in particular those from the "Modern Period" (1840–1966) such as Qi Baishi.[3][4][6][7][9] He ultimately built a balanced and encyclopedic collection of Modern Chinese painting.[4] He also assembled a comprehensive collection of seventeenth century paintings, a major collection of paintings by the twentieth century landscape master Huang Binhong, and a collection of Chinese seals that ranges from the Warring States period (475 – 221 BCE) through the twentieth century.[4][10] Tsao has been recognized as a guiding force behind several important private collections such as The Richard Fabian Collection[11] and The Michael Gallis Collection. Many works from Tsao's collection are either parts of the permanent collection or promised gifts to museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Tsao's collections, or collections he has built, have been prominently featured in numerous research, publication, and exhibition projects, including:

Publications

  • Chen Siyuan, Craig Yee, Jung Ying Tsao. Modern Ink: The Art of Xugu. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0824851460.
  • Britta Erickson, Craig Yee, Jung Ying Tsao. Modern Ink: The Art of Qi Baishi. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-8248-4766-1.
  • Kenneth Wayne ed. Isamu Noguchi and Qi Baishi: Beijing 1930. Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2013. ISBN 978-8874396399.
  • Wan Qingli, Zhao Li, Lu Fusheng, Qian Shaowu, Hou Yimin, Cai Xingyi, Shan Guolin. Selected Masterworks of Modern Chinese Painting: The Tsao Family Mozhai Collection (4 volumes). Shanghai: Shanghai Fine Arts Publishing House, 2010. ISBN 978-7807258483.
  • Stephen Little, Jonathan Spence, Chu-Tsing Li, Qianshen Bai, Richard Fabian. New Songs on Ancient Tunes: 19th – 20th Century Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy from the Richard Fabian Collection. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2007. ISBN 978-0937426791.
  • Julia Frances Andrews, Michael Knight, Pauline Yao, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Between the Thunder and the Rain: Chinese Paintings from the Opium War through the Cultural Revolution, 1840–1979. San Francisco: Echo Rock Ventures, in association with the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco – Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture, 2000. ISBN 978-0939117178.
  • Li Chu-chin (Chu-tsing Li), Wan Ch'ing-li. Chun-kuo hsien-tai hui-hua-shih: Wan-Ch'ing chih-pu (1840–1911). Taipei: Shih-t'ou ch'u-pan, 1998.
  • Jung Ying Tsao. The Paintings of Xugu and Qi Baishi. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0295973401.
  • Shen C. Y. Fu, Jan Stuart. Challenging the Past: the Paintings of Chang Dai-chien. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0295971254.
  • Jung Ying Tsao. Chinese Paintings of the Middle Qing Dynasty. San Francisco: San Francisco Graphic Society, 1987. ISBN 978-0961849306.
  • Kei Suzuki ed. Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue of Chinese Paintings (5 volumes). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1982. ISBN 978-0860083085.
  • Jung Ying Tsao, Joe Huang, James H. Soong. The Four Jens. Far East Fine Arts, Inc., 1977.

Exhibitions and loans

Friendships and recognition

Tsao was a younger contemporary and friend of the collector C. C. Wang,[5] who collected classical paintings, and thus, was competitive with Tsao only around collecting paintings of the seventeenth century, where their interests overlapped. Tsao also built lasting friendships with fellow art appreciators who lived in or travelled to the San Francisco Bay Area, including the artist Zhang Daqian,[5] professors of Chinese art history Michael Sullivan and Chu-tsing Li (pinyin: Li Zhujin) and their students Wan Qingli, Cai Xingyi, Britta Erickson and James Soong, scholar Fred Fang-yu Wang and the collectors Richard Fabian, Michael Gallis and Michael Shih. As China re-opened in the 1980s and 1990s, Tsao traveled there frequently, building friendships with the Shanghai Museum curators Xie Zhiliu and Zheng Wei, artists Li Keran, Zhu Jichan, Huang Junbi, Lou Shibai, dealer/collectors Robert Zhang (pinyin: Zhang Zongxian)[3] and others. In 2008, Tsao was selected to represent all American collectors and give a keynote address at the first annual World Congress of Chinese Collectors in Shanghai.[1][2] He was recognized by the organizers for collecting art not for investment, but rather, to elevate the spirit and nurture refinement.[1][2]

After his passing in 2011, Mr. Tsao's heirs established the Mozhai Foundation (in reference to Tsao's studio name), a charitable family foundation dedicated to supporting research and educational programming in the field of traditional Chinese art and culture.[18]

Notes

  1. ↑ United States Social Security Administration records indicate that he was born in 1923, while Tsao asserts he was born in 1929.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Organizing Committee of the World Congress of Chinese Collectors. Mingjia Tan Shoucang: Jingyan Pian 名家谈收藏：经验篇 [Masters on Art Collecting: Experiences]. Beijing: Dongfang Chubanshe 东方出版社 [Oriental Publisher], 2009.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Zhu Junbo 祝君波 ed. Shanghai 2008 Huaren Shoucangjia Dahui Wenxian Zhi Si: Dahui Yanjianglu 上海2008华人收藏家大会文献之四：大会演讲录 [The World Congress of Chinese Collectors Shanghai 2008, Series IV: Congress Speeches]. Shanghai: Shijie 2008 Huaren Shoucangjia Dahui Zuzhi Weiyuanhui 上海：世界华人收藏家大会组织委员会 [Organizing Committee of the World Congress of Chinese Collectors Shanghai], 2008.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 旧金山收藏家曹仲英不幸逝世，中美两地收藏界沉痛悼念[复制链接], 金山華人网, 2014-12-23.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Wan Qingli, Zhao Li, Lu Fusheng, Qian Shaowu, Hou Yimin, Cai Xingyi, Shan Guolin. Selected Masterworks of Modern Chinese Painting: The Tsao Family Mozhai Collection (4 volumes). Shanghai: Shanghai Fine Arts Publishing House, 2010. Vol. 1, p. 10. ISBN 978-7807258483.
  5. 1 2 3 4 李杰峰, 美国旧金山湾区华人收藏概述, 捜艺捜, 2008-10-13.
  6. 1 2 3 龚继遂, 欧美齐白石作品收藏：旧金山重要藏家是曹仲英, 中国新闻网, 2012-01-16.
  7. 1 2 3 马学东, 众专家谈齐白石作品的收藏与市场, 新浪收藏, 2010-12-16.
  8. 1 2 祝君波, 收藏热推动投资价格节节攀升 Archived 2015-02-05 at the Wayback Machine, 盛世收藏, 2012-10-26.
  9. 1 2 归雁, 金石 金石画派的前期骁将 ——吴让之绘画艺术及市场行情漫议, 博宝艺术网, 2011-03-17.
  10. 1 2 Special Collections: Chinese Seals online, University of California, Merced Library.
  11. 1 2 Stephen Little, Jonathan Spence, Chu-Tsing Li, Qianshen Bai, Richard Fabian. New Songs on Ancient Tunes: 19th – 20th Century Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy from the Richard Fabian Collection. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2007. p. 19. ISBN 978-0937426791.
  12. ↑ 浑厚华滋本民族——黄宾虹150周年纪念特展, 网易新闻, 2015.
  13. ↑ The Carved Brush: Calligraphy, Painting and Seal Carving by Qi Baishi Archived 2015-02-05 at the Wayback Machine, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 2013 – 2014.
  14. ↑ Isamu Noguchi and Qi Baishi: Beijing 1930 Archived 2012-12-09 at the Wayback Machine, University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2013.
  15. ↑ Isamu Noguchi and Qi Baishi: Beijing 1930, Noguchi Museum, 2013 – 2014.
  16. ↑ Selected Masterworks of Modern Chinese Painting from the Mozhai Collection, Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing, 2010.
  17. ↑ Challenging the Past: the Paintings of Chang Dai-chien, Smithsonian Institution, Sackler Gallery, 1991 – 1992.
  18. ↑ About the Mozhai Foundation, The Mozhai Foundation.
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