James Cahill dies at 87; scholar of Chinese art

41. Chiang Er-shih

 

You mention Jiang Ershi—I knew him well. A real crook. He came to the U.S. in the early 60s was it? leaving a wife and child, or children, in China; ingratiated himself with the wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Japan and others with banquets, gifts of paintings, etc.; and tied up with Loo's successor Frank Caro in New York to sell his collection of paintings. At one exhibition of them, Wen Fong turned up to see red marks ("sold") on most of the paintings, learned that they were going to Sackler (whom he was advising), told Sackler to withdraw from the purchase because too many of them were fakes; and had to attend a confrontation with Caro and Jiang, with Sackler present, to defend his statements--Caro and Jiang threatened to sue him. (I write this from memory of what Wen Fong and others told me.) Wen used a "Wang Meng" painting as an example—the original, if I remember right, is in the Shanghai Museum? and Wen was able to show why Jiang's was the fake. And I think he made his point also with others. Jiang later tried, again through Caro, to sell a big lot of them to Brundage, with d'Argencé's backing--Jiang had ingratiated himself also with Vadime Elisseéeff, one of d'Argencé's teachers and supporters, who had given him an exhibition of his paintings at the Musée Cernuschi where he was director. This time it was I who had to discourage Brundage from buying the whole lot, which deepened the rift between myself and Yvon, who was meanwhile opposing the purchase by Brundage of the Contag collection, which I was promoting (see #32 above). In the end Brundage bought a few of the Chiang Er-shi paintings, the better ones, but not the whole lot. Caro and Jiang were going around during the Brundage symposium, I was told, saying that i was promoting the Contag collection because I was getting a cut of the sale price (completely untrue—I got nothing at all.) Jiang was also the one who, representing Chang Ta-ch'ien, sold Chang's fakes (Juran, Yi Yuanji) to the British Museum. A real crook. Someone once told me that he was the only person who could out-cheat Chang Ta-ch'ien.

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