'In 1992, Professor Chao Shao-an made a gift to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco of eighty works from his personal collection - works that he had withheld from sale throughout his career. This catalogue illustrates in full-colour all eighty paintings, a gift which constitutes in size and quality the finest group of his work to enter a public collection. The paintings include album studies, flowers and birds, multiple sheets compositions of water buffalo, great bursts of azaleas, landscapes, and a portrait, The works are arranged here chronologically within subject category, and represent a personal assessment of his achievements in visual effects, pictorial concepts and scale. For the Asian Art Museum, they constitute a documentary record of the artist's convictions about Chinese painting of the modern age and the Lingnan school.

The two essays included here provide a context for better understanding the paintings of Chao Shao-an. In the first, Mayching Kao, Director of the Art Museum at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, explains the historical and biographical circumstances under which the artist created his paintings, working on the assumption that Chao Shao-an's life and work are best comprehended in the context of modern China. The second essay, by Terese Tse Bartholomew, Curator of Indian, Himaliyan and Chinese Decorative Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, explains the tropical flora of southern China which infuses the paintings of Chao Shao-an. The catalogue entries which accompany the illustrations include translation of the artist's poems and inscriptions, provided by So Kam Ng Lee.' (Book Flap)

Published on the occasion of the exhibition 'The Art of Chao Shao-an,' held from April to June 1997. Includes bibliography and index. With biographical notes of the artist.