Michael Sullivan (1916-2013) arrived in China as a member of the International Red Cross in 1940, and he was assigned the task of transporting medical supplies between Chongqing, Kunming, Guiyang, and Chengdu. During his journeys in west China he witnessed severe bombing by the Japanese. This sketch by Lü Sibai (1905-1973) shows a street in Chongqing after Japanese bombing. Lü Sibai was an oil painter who studied in France from 1929 to 1934. He returned to China in 1934 and taught at the Art Department of National Central University Nanjing, which had been moved to west China during the Second World War (1939-1945). Lü produced this drawing and gave it to Khoan Sullivan (1919-2003) in Chongqing in 1941, before she met Michael. It is, therefore, the first work in the Khoan and Michael Sullivan collection of Chinese art. Lü Sibai committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
Sullivan, Michael, Modern Chinese Art: The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection, revised edn (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2009), no. 28 on p. 240, illus. p.241 fig. 28
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