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Pantheon Books, Published 1946. Hardcover, 139 pp. plus 80 unnumbered pages of plates; 31 cm; color frontispiece (Lu Chao-yang, Peacocks and Peonies) and 130 black-and-white illustrations on plates. Designed by Jacques Schiffrin; printed by L.F. White Company and bound by Russell-Rutter Company, New York.
In Good condition with an Acceptable dust jacket. Blue cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on spine; mild to moderate spotting along top edges of front and rear covers; bumped corners; mild shelf and edge wear with some color loss along edges and at head and foot of spine. Binding tight. Pages with mild to moderate toning, foxing and spotting to edges of first and last few leaves and along edges of text block. Original Pantheon Books invoice (no. 41213) and matching packing slip laid in, dated November 29, 1946, billing one copy at $8.50 to a Wayzata, Minnesota buyer. Pictorial dust jacket with color plate of grooms and horses on front panel, Pantheon Art Publications list on rear; split completely in two along front hinge; several chips along edges and spine; 4-inch slit to paper over rear hinge and flap; mild to moderate overall toning, spotting and soiling, heavier toning to spine panel. Price of $8.50 on front flap. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. A survey of Chinese art from the Neolithic painted pottery of Kansu and Honan through the Shang and Chou bronzes, sculpture from Han tomb figures to Buddhist works of the fifth to seventeenth centuries, and painting to the eighteenth century, with the development of form as its organizing principle. Ludwig Bachhofer (1894-1976) taught East Asian art at the University of Munich and then at the University of Chicago from 1935, and co-edited the Art Bulletin from 1941 to 1945; this was his principal work in English. The plates reproduce objects from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Freer Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Nelson Gallery, the British Museum, the Louvre and the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, among others. Preface dated Chicago, Summer 1944. Contents: List of Illustrations; Chinese Dynasties; The Neolithic Age; The Bronzes; Sculpture; Painting; Notes; Index.