The Spirit of the Brush, Being the Outlook of Chinese Painters on Nature from Eastern Chin to Five Dynasties, AD 317-960 (Wisdom of the East Series)

112pp, in illustrated cloth boards with red lettering (gently bruised at head of spine). Old water damage has left stains and mottling on front endpapers else internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original dust jacket (worn and stained, lightly rubbed at edges, tiny chips at spine head). 12mo. The early Chinese artists of the Fourth Century were also the first art critics of painting, and the ancient philosophy of the Tao, or Way, influenced their aesthetic outlook. These few essays that have come down to us are of value in showing the gradual evolution of great ideals and the profound differences in method and approach between East and West.