The Eight Noble Officials (Pa-kung-hsiang)
Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, Nelson-Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, November 7, 1980 – January 4, 1981; The Cleveland Museum of Art, February 7 – April 5, 1981; The Asia Society, December 3, 1981 – February 28, 1982; Tokyo National Museum, October 4 – November 17, 1982, no. 5.
Arthur B. Rothwell (1906-1994), New York, by 1949 [1];
Purchased from Rothwell by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1949.
NOTES:
[1] Arthur B. Rothwell was born in Oldham, England in 1906 and worked as an import manager for Yangtze Trading Company during his early career. He spent several years in New York as president of Oriental Fine Arts, Inc., until 1949, when he closed the gallery and moved to Panama. By 1959, he lived in Dallas, Texas, where he was involved in the oil industry with the Cheyenne Oil Corporation.
"Rare Chinese Painting on Silk Has Survived a Thousand Years," Kansas City Star (December 30, 1949).
Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, vol. IV (New York: China Institute in America, 1950), 68, fig. 13.
Osvald Siren, Chinese Paintings: Leading Masters and Principles, 7 vols. (New York: 1956-1958),vol. III, pl. 103; vol. I, 139-140.
Lin Yu-t’ang, Imperial Peking (London: 1961), pl. 56.
Ross E. Taggart, George L. McKenna, and Marc F. Wilson, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. II, Art of the Orient. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 47.
Marc F. Wilson, “ The Chinese Painter and his Vision, Apollo, special issue for the Asian art collection in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Vol. XCVII, no. 133 (March 1973):228-230, fig. 3,4.
Wai-Kam Ho, et al., Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. (The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, c1980), 6-8, no. 5.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 312.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 331, fig. 147.
