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

Fu Shen (born 1937) received his PhD in Chinese Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. He has held distinguished posts in various institutes, from senior curator of Chinese Art at the Sackler and Freer Galleries at the Smithsonian Institute, to being an associate professor at Yale University. In addition, Fu has written numerous scholarly works concerning the history and connoisseurship of Chinese painting and calligraphy. He currently serves on the faculty of the Graduate Institute of Art History at National Taiwan University.

As an amateur painter and calligrapher in the scholarly tradition, Fu continues to paint and write for pleasure in addition to teaching and research. This horizontal inscribed board by Fu Shen was given to Michael Sullivan (1916-2013) when he moved into his flat in Oxford and hung there for nearly thirty years. The inscription reads ‘At the request of Mr and Mrs Sullivan. In winter of a bingyin year [1986].’