Calligraphy

These paintings were owned by Professor John King Fairbank (1907-1991) and his wife Wilma Cannon Fairbank (1909-2002,) and remained in the family to this time. Professor Fairbank was one of the most influential and prolific American scholars of Chinese history. After conducting research at Tsinghua University from 1932-36, he pursued a long and distinguished career at Harvard University. There he was one of the founders of the Center for East Asian Research and one of the early organizers of the authoritative The Cambridge History of China. Mrs. Fairbank studied ancient art in China in the 1930s and subsequently published her research. During World War II she became the first employee of the China section of the U.S. State Department's Cultural Relations Division and served as cultural attachee to the U.S. Embassy in Chongqing and then Nanjing from 1945-47.