Page 35 - J. P Morgan Collection of Chinese Art and Porcelain

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

HAVE been asked to write a short introduction

to a revised catalogue of the Morgan Collection

I of Chinese Porcelain, and have recently been
afforded the opportunity of examining every
piece in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum,
before attempting the flattering, but difficult, task of

presenting a proem worthy of the occasion. A certain

familiarity with the finest collections in Europe,
notably the Salting collection in the Victoria and

Albert Museum, the Franks Collection in the British
Museum, the Grandidier Collection in the Louvre,
and the old treasures of Augustus the Strong in the

Johanneum, at Dresden, prompts me to place the one

before us in the first rank for the striking beauty of

many of the specimens, and for their peculiar fitness

and readiness for a serious study of the history and
development of the ceramic art in China.

"The study of any branch of art* supposes," as Mr.
Stanley Lane-Poole justly observes, in his handbook on
the Art of the Saracens in Egypt, "some acquaintance

*The following sketch is taken, in the main, from my handbook

on Chinese Art, pubHshed in 2 vols., 1Q05-1906, by the Board of
Education, for the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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