Page 139 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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The Western aesthetics also affected Loo’s dealing in terms of medium and category.

White marble sculptures, which recalled their Greek counterparts, constituted a distinct

category in Loo’s inventory. 291 The colossal Buddhist sculpture that Loo displayed in the

International Exhibition of Chinese Art in London offers a good example (Fig. 39). In

Loo’s business during the 1910s and 1920s, figure paintings, especially those made in a

naturalistic style, were popular items. The Five Old Men of Sui-yang, an album of

portraits of five high officials in the Northern Song dynasty offers a good example

(Fig. 41). 292 The meticulous rendering and lifelike quality of their faces must have held a

special appeal to the Western viewer, as the catalogue text stated, “When men of the

present time meet with genuine specimens of paintings by Sung artists they regard them

as great treasures. Moreover, in these portraits the appearance and bearing of the Five Old

Men of ancient times are preserved, and when we open the album and see the old men we

cannot but have a feeling of reverence for them.” (Kwen 1916, Cat. no.60)

The interpretation of the painting Shakyamuni Buddha Descending the Mountain

(Buddha under the Mango Tree) (MFA 56.256), the first piece in the Loo’s 1924

catalogue of T'ang, Sung and Yüan Paintings Belonging to Various Chinese Collectors,

offers another example of how Loo marketed the aesthetic parallels between Chinese and

Western art. The catalogue compiler Berthold Laufer elucidated the painting’s humanistic

and aesthetic value by comparing it to Durer’s painting Apostles, “This is not the

conventional, stereotyped Buddha…, but it is the great individual Buddha as a powerful

291
See Chapter Five, pp.211-2.
292 The FGA has two leaves, (F.48.10, 48.11); the Met owns one; and the Yale University
Museum’s Small Moore Collection holds two.