could not buy a dozen scrolls without at least one Tzï-ang (Chau Möng-fu) and two Tang Yins or K'iu Yings. I, for one, prefer a copy, honestly called so, by a decent artist ten times to a doubtful original.

38. Shang-kuan Chóu (†, also called Chu-chuang,

#),

born in 1664 at Ting-chóu in Fu-kién, made his reputation as a landscape-painter by a picture of the sacred hill Lo-fóu-shan near Canton. But he was also a great portraitist in the Chinese sense. He drew the outlines of all the greatest national heroes, both of the sword aud the brush, cut them in wood and published them in 1743 under the title Wan-siau-t'ang Chu-chuang-huachuan(晚笑堂竹莊畫傳), a series containing some of

the best work of Chinese illustrative art. I have on a former occasion (Ueber fremde Einflüse in der chines. Kunst, p. 61) drawn attention to one of Chu-chuang's portraits, that of the hero Ti Tsing (11. century, Giles, Biogr. Dict., No 1910), being probably copied from a Foreign portrait. In his scroll work he cultivated, and possibly created, a special style of human figures, hoary old men, in which specialty his pupil Huang Shön appears as a continuation of his own genius.

39. Huang Shön, also called Ying Piau,

HL, and

Kung-mau,), a native of Fu-kién, of low parentage, was a talented poet, painter and calligraphist in the running hand style. He travelled about for years in the lower Yang-tzï region and lived eight years in Yang-chóu, where he was particularly well received. He chiefly cultivated human figures, in which his countryman Shang-kuan Chóu had been his instructor. Hoary were his own province, and he gave them "life's motion”(畫人物蒼老生動). One of these old men in my collection is dated 1726, another one 1746. These dates

old men

probably describe the period of his greatest activity as a painter.