📍 Freer’s Marginalia and Mandarin Ducks

🤖 Freer’s Marginalia and Mandarin Ducks

¿Freer’s Marginalia and Mandarin Ducks? Sí, pero no como te lo contaron 👀

Title page of
An Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art
.
In 1906, industrialist
Charles Lang Freer
gave his collection of Asian and American art and related materials in a gift that began the Freer Gallery of Art. This gift included books which are now
in the Freer-Sackler Library
. Among them, some that contain Freer’s personal notes and marginalia. One of these is a first edition copy of Herbert Giles’ book
An Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art
. This book, originally published in 1905, was the first to provide a comprehensive history of Chinese painting in a European language. Freer made margin notes throughout the book, which help show his personal interests as he was building his art collection. His copy of this book has been
digitized
by the Smithsoni

🧠 Lo Que Debes Saber

an Libraries and Archives and can now be examined online.
An example of Freer’s notes can be found on page 75. Here Freer has underlined “Hsu Hsi” (Xu Xi), a Five Dynasties Southern Tang (tenth century) Chinese painter, and has written in the left margin: “
Two ducks + flowering plant called ‘hung-loo-hua’ Hong Kong.
” This seems to be a reference to the painting “
Mandarin Ducks under Smartweed
”

Saquen sus conclusiones, yo solo reporto. 👀