Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Photo-book Publisher |
Founded | 1912 |
Headquarters | Beijing,China |
Key people | Tong Jixu, Tong Zhishu |
Products | Photo-books of Ancient Art Works |
Yanguangshi, was the first Chinese publishing house to publishPhotobooks of famous ancient painting and calligraphy from the imperial collections using the colophon photographic printing technique.
After the 1912Xinhai Revolution,Tong Jixu started Yanguangshi to publish photo-books of ancientpainting andcalligraphy from the Qing imperial collections. Through his friendChen Baochen, who wasPuyi’s teacher and some of his students such asPuru, he would borrow the art pieces and use high-resolution camera to take glass version photographs of them and use advanced photographic printing process called Corot Press to print photo-books. In 1924, after Tong became an official (director of operation or Danglangzhong in Chinese) at theImperial Household Department himself, he stopped borrowing any additional artworks from the court in order to avoid conflict of interest. He also passed the operation of the business to his eldest son, Tong Zhishu. Since then, the business only focused on re-publishing existing editions or photo-books/art catalogs of private collections. In the 1940s, Tong Zhishu sold most of the original prints toCommercial Press (Shangwu Yinshuguan in Chinese) and kept a small amount of glass prints as souvenirs.
The photo-books include works fromWang Xizhi,Yan Zhenqing,Sun Guoting,Huaisu,Su Dongpo,Mi Fu,Guo Xi,Zhao Mengfu, andGiuseppe Castiglione, etc.
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