Michael Sullivan (1916–2013)

When he first arrived in China in 1940, Chongqing was already under air assault by the Japanese and Sullivan was soon be- hind the steering wheel of an International Red Cross British Relief Unit truck, his driving skills tested by terrain that was challenging enough without bombs falling and unexploded ordnance all around. When Sullivan returned to academic studies in England in 1947, it was at first to pursue European art at the Courtauld Institute, but he soon transferred to the Uni- versity of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) to study classical Chinese (M.A., 1950), and within another two years he had obtained his doctoral degree from Harvard-the first dissertation on Chinese painting in the English language. See Modern Chinese Art: The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2001); for the symposium that accompanied the exhibition of these works in Seattle, organized by Sullivan's pupil Josh Yiu, see Writing Modern Chinese Art: Historiographic Explorations (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 2009).