Distribution of the paintings by date

The histogram (Figure 3) compares the choice of paintings from the different periods in the 28 issues with the choice made for “Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting¹”. The date attributed to each print is the date of birth of the painter, rather than the date of production, which is often unknown. There is a strong preference for paintings from the late Ming and early Qing dynasty in “Famous Chinese Paintings”, perhaps by availability rather than by choice, while the choice in the other sample is more uniform, but with the same slight increases in the Yuan and Ming dynasties.

Comparison of the number of paintings reproduced in the 28 issues and in “Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting”

^{1. Richard M. Barnhart, Xin Yang, Nie Chongzheng, James Cahill, Hung Wu, Lang Shaojun, Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, Yale University press, 1997↩}