Painting in the Far East – Laurence Binyon (1908) (1st ed)

S$132.00

Painting in the Far East – Laurence Binyon (1908) (1st ed)

S$132.00

Title: Painting in the Far East: An Introduction to the History of Pictorial Art in Asia Especially China and Japan

Author: Laurence Binyon

Publisher: Edwin Arnold, 1908. First edition.

Condition: Hardcover, fair. Fading to covers and fraying to edges. Hinge cracked but binding tight. Rough edges. 34 black-and-white illustrations with tissue guards. A large book, overseas shipping will cost extra.

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An encyclopedic work about the paintings of China and Japan, with numerous black-and-white plates. A comprehensive book, and one of the most important early works written in English on the art of China and Japan.

About the author (from Wikipedia):

Robert Laurence Binyon, CH (10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943) was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services.

Immediately after graduating in 1893, Binyon started working for the Department of Printed Books of the British Museum, writing catalogues for the museum and art monographs for himself. In 1895 his first book, Dutch Etchers of the Seventeenth Century, was published. In that same year, Binyon moved into the Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings, under Campbell Dodgson. In 1909, Binyon became its Assistant Keeper, and in 1913 he was made the Keeper of the new Sub-Department of Oriental Prints and Drawings. Around this time he played a crucial role in the formation of Modernism in London by introducing young Imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. to East Asian visual art and literature. Many of Binyon’s books produced while at the Museum were influenced by his own sensibilities as a poet, although some are works of plain scholarship – such as his four-volume catalogue of all the Museum’s English drawings, and his seminal catalogue of Chinese and Japanese prints.

In 1904 he married historian Cicely Margaret Powell, and the couple had three daughters. During those years, Binyon belonged to a circle of artists, as a regular patron of the Wiener Cafe of London. His fellow intellectuals there were Ezra Pound, Sir William Rothenstein, Walter Sickert, Charles Ricketts, Lucien Pissarro and Edmund Dulac.