Scope and Contents

Fifty two photographic prints relating to the Asian art dealer C.T. Loo. Photographs feature interior and exterior views of Loo's Paris gallery, showing important works of art, many of which were later acquired by museums and private collections of Europe and the US. Also included are formal portraits and informal snapshots of Loo, his family and associates in Paris and Beijing.

Scope and Contents

北京

Arrangement

Photographs are numbered individually with no attempt to organize by subject.

Biographical / Historical

The photographs document the gallery, C.T. Loo et Cie, known as the Pagoda (renovated 1926-1928, currently a designated historical site in Paris) of the leading internateal dealer of Chinese art C.T. Loo (1880-1957). Well known to art experts around the world, the gallery attracted the attention of the renowned art historian Osvald Siren, who wrote an article in 1928 on this gallery, focusing on the murals. Many of the objects shown in the gallery can be identified as important pieces in major American and European museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Nelson-Atkins Gallery, Kansas City, and the Musee Guimet, Paris. Loo was instrumental in introducing some of the most important bronzes, jades, and stone sculptures to the Freer Gallery of Art between 1915 and 1951. This collection holds an added significance because it comes from Janine Loo Pierre-Emmanuel (1920-2013), daughter of C. T. Loo, and ex-wife of Jean-Pierre Dubosc, the prominent Sinologist, collector and dealer of Chinese art. Mme. Pierre-Emmanuel, a well-known dealer in the post-war era, was in contact with important scholars, collectors and dealers, such as Pierre Teillard de Chardin, Laurence Sickman, Grenville L. Winthrop, Arthur M. Sackler, Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3rd, and J. T. Tai. In addition to Chinese art, the gallery interior views show pieces from South and Southeast Asia

Local Numbers

FSA A2010.07