Читать книгу Way of the Brush - Fritz van Briessen - Страница 9

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK is really the work of many minds. Its inception goes back to the year 1944, when my friendship with the Peking painter P'u Ch'uan began, and with it the slow but steady growth of this study. It would never have come into being at all without P'u Ch'üan's constancy in devoting his time, his artistic mastery, and his great gift as a teacher to the undertaking. Many artists, scholars, and art lovers in Peking and Tokyo, in Munich and Rome have each, at one time or another, contributed something—a word, a sentence, some small but significant nuance—to its finishing.

Finished and yet unfinished: for I am sure no one is more conscious of the study's failings than I myself. But if these failings are less numerous and less obvious than they were in the first draft, it is because of the suggestions and advice so kindly offered by Professor Herbert Franke, of Munich University, and Mrs. Elise Grilli, of Tokyo, who have patiently read the manuscript; by Professor Peter Olbricht, of Bonn University, and Professor Walter Fuchs, of Cologne University, who have contributed valuable corrections of fact.

My original German manuscript was translated by Helga and James Herbert, in collaboration with myself. The English version then went to the publisher's, where it was edited by Meredith Weatherby, who improved it with excellent clarifications and rearrangements of parts. This process, again carried out in close collaboration with me, has resulted in the substantially rewritten form presented here.

For permission to use illustrations and quotations I wish to express My thanks to Methuen and Co., Ltd., London; Macmillan and Co., London; Dietrich Reimer, Berlin; Mr. T. Tafel, Stuttgart; the Department of Archaeology, Government of India (for permission to reproduce the picture from Sir Aurel Stein's Ancient Khotan); Mr. Chiang Yee, of Riverdale, New York; the Oxford University Press; Ōtsuka Kōgeisha, Tokyo; Tōkyō Bijutsu Taikan, Tokyo; Shina Meiga, Tokyo; Geien Shinchō, Tokyo; T. Hasegawa and Son, Tokyo; National Museum, Tokyo; Nezu Museum, Tokyo; Sumitomo Collection, Ōiso; Mr. J. -P. Dubosc, Paris; and Mr. Sōfū Teshi-gahara, of Tokyo.