Page 30 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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Parisians has gone since some time already.” According to the statistics of the Chinese

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antique export trade with the U.S. in the port of Shanghai, the United States was the
dominant exporter from 1916-1931. In 1916, for example, the U.S. exported 434,335

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custom taels worth of Chinese antiques from Shanghai. In comparison, England
exported 12,950, and France 10,881 (Futian 2005, 77).

Loo’s business also benefited from the chaotic situation in China and the growing

interest in ancient Chinese art in America in the early twentieth century. After the fall of

the Qing dynasty in 1911, imperial collections and many important private collections

became available on the market. When Loo arrived in America, Asian art pioneers, such

as Okakura Kakuzo, Ernest Fenollosa, and John E. Lodge at the Museum of Fine Arts,

Boston, and Berthold Laufer at the Field Museum in Chicago, had laid a foundation for

the reception of early Chinese art in America. The core of the early Chinese art collection

at the Freer Gallery of Art was formed between 1914 and 1919, when the magnate

collector Charles Lang Freer acquired a large number of fine Chinese paintings, archaic

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jades, bronzes, and sculptures from C. T. Loo and other art dealers. It is also during this

period that American scholars made seminal contribution to the study of Chinese art in

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the West. Important publications include Ernest Fenollosa’s Epochs of Chinese and

10
C. T. Loo to P. J. Sachs, June 27, 1918, folder: Loo T.C. Dealer, Paul J. Sachs files,
HUAMA.
11 Shanghai with Beijing and Tianjin were the major ports for antique exportation in
China.
12 Chinese currency.
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Keith Wilson, e-mail message to author, September 20, 2007, and C.L. Freer purchase
voucher, CLFP-FGA.
14 European scholars dominated Chinese art study in the West in the early twentieth
century.