The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting [Paperback]

Mai-mai Sze (Editor, Translator)

Book Description

Series: Princeton/Bollingen Paperbacks | Publication Date: 1978

Originally published as Volume 2 of The Tao of Painting, this is the first English translation of the famous Chinese handbook, the "Chieh Tzu Yüan Hua Chuan" (original, 1679-1701). Mai-mai Sze has translated and annotated the texts of instructions, discussions of the fundamentals of painting, notes on the preparation of colors, and chief editorial prefaces.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Mustard Seed Garden will always be one of the greatest manuals of the most marvellous painting the world has ever known, and one cannot be too grateful for having it, with its commentary, available in English. -- Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society

Language Notes

Text: English, Chinese

Product Details

• Paperback: 648 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; Annotated edition edition (1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691018197
• ISBN-13: 978-0691018195
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 8.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Classic of Chinese Painting, February 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Paperback)

While the English translation leaves much to be desired, this book is THE classic manual of traditional Chinese painting. It is a must for the library of any fan of Chinese brush painting, but it should not be the only book used for instruction, especially if you don't have a teacher. Since the true original book was written in the 17th century, it was printed with woodblocks, so the subtleties of ink shading are not very well illustrated.

However, it is an excellent summary of the myriad of brush techniques, especially for rocks and trees. I highly recommend it as a reference book for anyone serious about Chinese brush painting.

If the translation were better, I would give it 5 stars. Unfortunately, this is the only English version in print, as far as I know. But once you know how to paint, most of the words are not important anyway.

62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good book, a bad translation, August 14, 1997

By 

Tzu-Hsien Sang [e-mail] (Ann Arbor) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Paperback)

The Mustard Seed Garden Manuel of Painting had been a standard reference book for Chinese beginners of painting for a long time (though it ceased to be so quite a while ago). It remains a valuable summary of styles and methods in traditional Chinese paintings, and is of a lot of historical interests because it represents the scope and perspective of the authors some 300 years ago. It is really a fun book to read, but it would be dangerous to use the book as a guideline for appreciating traditional Chinese paintings cause this book was, after all, compiled with a very strict ideology of paintings, even ignoring and misinterpreting many art-historical facts. I would have given the book a 10 if this was not a bad translation. First, we have to admit, it is an old translation. For whatever reasons which I suspect are related to the fact that the book was first published at 1956, there are simply many wrong translations in the English text. If you can read Chinese, I bet you would hardly resist the temptation of giving the book a thorough revision. I often laughed hurting my stomach when I read it. I will leave you to judge whether it's a good aspect or a bad one of this book.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must, February 1, 2005

By 

Laerte Agnelli (São Paulo, Sao Paulo SP Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Paperback)

Thanks to the Amazon:" look inside this book" I purchased the The Mustard Seed Garden Manual Of Painting. It is amazing how didatic and philosophical can be a text written three hundred years ago ! I could not stop reading since opened the first page: for those who paints or admires chinese pictures (or even calligraphy ) - it is really a must. I recommend to read carefully the : "look inside" because when you receive the book it will surprise you: it is much, much more than that. And, being a 640 pages book and in an almost squared form, it is also delightful to hold those messages that came from the past and is still valid today. Buy now, because if it goes out of print, for sure , you will repent to miss a Classic.