Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

In the 1980s, Michael Sullivan (1916-2013) visited China frequently and made many new friends among the younger artists who had emerged from the darkness of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). On one visit, he met printmakers who were developing the shuiyin (water-based printing) technique into an expressive art form at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. This work, a fine example of the technique, was given to Michael by Lu Fang (born 1932), a teacher at the Academy. The inscription reads ‘For the respected Professor Michael Sullivan and Madam Wu Huan. Lu Fang in Hangzhou.’

Shuiyin print is a technique perfected early in the 17th century in southern Anhui province and Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The blocks are hand-coloured with watercolor and printed on multilayer sprayed paper to produce subtle gradations of tone and atmosphere, the aim being to create the effect of a painting. With the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the tradition in Nanjing declined and was not revived until the early 1960s, when the Jiangsu branch of the Chinese Artists Association held training sessions in the technique.