Part 2 from The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual (3rd Chinese edition) : [volume 2]

1800 · 13 pictures

The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual is a Chinese painting instruction book from 1800, a later edition of a text first published in the seventeenth century, made for amateur painters learning brush technique. Its double-page spreads show bamboo drawn in ink with a few brush strokes, each leaf and stalk set out as a model to copy. The plain ink-on-paper line work, with stalks in pale grey wash and leaves in sharp dark strokes, suggests a designer could borrow the economy of a single brush gesture for botanical or minimalist graphics.

Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art · No known copyright restrictions · More from this library