Page 160 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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rooted racial prejudice against the Chinese was illustrated by the creation of the fictional

figure Ah Sin, who feigns ignorance of card games and eventually beats an American

cardsharper. In the caricature of Ah Sin created in the 1870s, despite his Western-style

hat, such features as his flat and broad face, wide nose, slanting eyes, and pigtail

unmistakably betray his Chinese identity (Fig. 50). His large and dark Chinese mantle,

squinted eyes, and the text on the left corner, “What has Ah Sin got up his sleeves” all

suggest a man full of dark tricks (Tchou 2001, 199, fig.25).

Loo’s wealth, power, cross-cultural dexterity, and the aura of art surrounding him

certainly reversed this stereotype of the lowbrow and corrupted Chinese. In the

Westerner’s eye, nonetheless, Loo could not rid himself of some innate marks of being

Chinese. Henry La Farge in an Art News article observed that through Loo spoke French

and English fluently, he “…generously interspersed with liquid ‘L’ sounds for ‘Rs,’

which the Chinese-born never completely divests himself” (La Farge 1950, 42). La Farge

further noted that though Loo was completely Europeanized through his marriage to a

French woman, he still retained “an Oriental fastidiousness of taste” (La Farge 1950, 42).

American collectors such as Charles L. Freer and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. viewed Loo

largely as a crafty Chinese man. In 1916, knowing that Loo had a plaster cast made after

a statue he had sold to the Meyers, Freer wrote to him, “…I hope that in the future you

will avoid such experiences; all purchasers of art objects dislike the existence of replicas,

and if your customers know of their existence it will surely injure your trade most

seriously.” 334 In 1916, Freer, suspicious of Loo’s dishonest conduct in the negotiation,

334 C.L. Freer to C. T. Loo, March 17, 1916, CLFP-FGA.