Page 157 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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Joseph Duveen was creating an art empire in America (Behrman 1952). In the nineteenth

century, France was not only the uncontested hub of Western art, but also the leader in

collecting and promoting Asian art in the West. In the last quarter of the nineteenth

century, French dealers and collectors of Asian art, who had positioned themselves as

328
experts in the United States, began to draw American visitors. In the early 1920s, there

was “ a grand exodus to New York from Paris of most of the prominent Paris art dealers-

notably M. Jacques Seligmann, D.G. Kelekian, Daguerre, and Arnold Seligmann.” 329 In

the first half of the twentieth century, the most prominent New York-based dealers of

Chinese or Asian art were of European origin, such as the British dealers John Sparks,

Frank Partridge; the French dealer Edgar Worch; the German dealer Otto Burchard; and

the Dutch dealer Jan Kleykamp. Loo identified himself as part of this glamorous

community of European dealers. In 1935, an exhibition of Loo’s collection was launched

at the Galleries of Jacques Seligmann & Co. 330

Although the United States emerged as the most important collector of Chinese art

outside of China in the twentieth century, its history of collecting and studying Chinese

art, compared to Europe, was brief. In 1929, Benjamin March observed that although

Eastern Asian art collection in America “…excels those of Europe in total size and mass

quality, American scholarship, with the exception of Doctor Laufer, Professor Fenollosa

and Doctor John C. Ferguson, has made comparatively little contribution to the world’s

328 During 1887-1888 the renowned dealer Seigfried Bing, who played a major role in
spreading the craze for Asian art in Europe, organized several sales of Chinese and
Japanese objects in New York and Philadelphia (Weisberg 1990, 23).
329 “Paris Art Dealers Coming,” Art News, January 24, 1920.
330 New York Times, January 14, 1935.