[ILLUSTRATIONS BY SANYU] THE POEMS OF T'AO TS'IEN [TAOISM] - Lot 114

[ILLUSTRATIONS BY SANYU] THE POEMS OF T'AO TS'IEN [TAOISM] Translated from the Chinese by LIANG TSONG TAI (Liang Zongdai). Preface by Paul Valéry Paris, Éditions Lemarget, 1930, in-4, paperback, lined cover, in publisher's cardboard slipcase, 86 pp. With three original full-page etchings by SANYU and a frontispiece portrait of the poet after Hwang Shen. A very well preserved copy. One of 290 numbered copies on Arches vellum à la forme, out of a total print run of 306, of which only 296 were placed on the market. This is the only work illustrated by Sanyu. T'ao Ts'ien (365-427) (better known in English today as Tao Qian or by his birth name, Tao Yuanming), was a major Chinese poet of the Six Dynasties period. Tao Yuanming is considered one of the greatest poets inspired by Taoism. His poems sing of country retreat and wine. Tao's translator is Liang Zongdai (1903-1983), a poet from Guangxhi who came to Europe in 1924 to study Western languages. He dedicates the work to his friend Jean Prévost, recalling that he had kept some of his poems hidden in a drawer, lest they contribute to the mass of mediocre translations of Chinese masterpieces: "Yet I read them to you one evening, by the light of a night-light, on the banks of the Seine. And, to my great surprise, they met with your prompt approval. From then on, your encouragement enabled me to pursue my work serenely, of which this little volume is the fruit." Liang returned to China in 1931 and translated works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Blake, Rilke, Paul Valéry and other European poets and thinkers into Chinese. The poems are illustrated with three original etchings by the famous Franco-Chinese painter and engraver Sanyu (or Chuang Yu, 1901-1966), often dubbed "the Chinese Matisse". Sanyu, who, like Liang, moved to Paris in the early 1920s as part of the first major generation of Chinese artists to study in Europe, remained in the West and settled in Montparnasse, where he met Brancusi, Braque and Duchamp. His career as an engraver was relatively brief, and in particular his work in etching and drypoint, which he abandoned for practical reasons in favor of linocut in 1932 (several years before Matisse began working with this technique). The Chinese landscapes featured here represent new subjects in Sanyu's work.