NEW YORK CITY - Nearly 100 works of Chinese painting collected by the renowned artist/collector C.C. Wang - who has amassed one of the two most important private collections of Chinese old master paintings of the Twentieth Century - are on view in "The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the C.C. Wang Family Collection," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition features the recent promised gift by the Oscar Tang family of 12 major works acquired from the C.C. Wang Family in 1997, along with some 50 additional paintings and calligraphies acquired from Mr Wang by the museum over the last 26 years. These works are augmented by important loans from the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Art Museum, Princeton University, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the British Museum, and the C.C. Wang Family.

The exhibition and catalogue are made possible with the support of the Tang Fund.

"The Artist as Collector" will explore issues of authentication and connoisseurship in Chinese art, and will feature the side-by-side juxtaposition of the renowned Tenth Century hanging scroll "Riverbank" attributed to Dong Yuan (active 930s-960s) - which some scholars claim to be a modern forgery by Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) - with a landscape forgery by Zhang. The comparison of the two works will be facilitated by the inclusion of full-scale digital reproductions that make the brushwork more legible.

The collection of C.C. Wang is a unique historical achievement, encompassing many masterpieces dispersed from the Qing imperial collection early in this century. The collection is richest in paintings of the Tenth through the Fourteenth Century, including Northern Song (960-1126) monumental landscapes, figural narratives and elegant album-size paintings sponsored by the Southern Song court (1127-1279), and the full sweep of scholar painting from its inception in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries to its early flowering during the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368).

Beginning with "Riverbank," attributed to the Tenth Century patriarch of the scholar-painting landscape tradition, Dong Yuan, the exhibition documents the development of a scholarly landscape style with examples by Song artists Zhao Lingrang (active circa 1070), Li Gonglin (circa 1041-1106), and Mi Youren (1074-1151), and continues with multiple examples by virtually every leading landscape painter of the Yuan period, including Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Wu Zhen (1280-1354), Ni Zan (1306-1374), and Want Meng (circa 1308-1385).

The Song courtly tradition is equally well-represented, beginning with the anonymous late Tenth to early Eleventh Century masterpiece "Palace Banquet" and major narrative works by Li Tang (circa 1070s-circa 1150s) and Ma Hezhi (active circa 1130-circa 1170), and culminating with 15 keenly observed images of gardens, flowers, and birds by members of the Southern Song Imperial Painting Academy, notably Ma Yuan (active circa 1190-1225) and his son Ma Lin (circa 1180-after 1256).

The continuation of both the scholarly and courtly traditions during the Ming and Qing dynasties is also well-represented, including an especially rich concentration of works by individualist and orthodox masters of the Seventeenth Century, with masterpieces by the individualists Zhu Da (Bada Shanren, 1626-1705) and Shitao (1642-1707), and by the orthodox painters Wang Hui (1633-1717), Wu Li (1632-1717), and Wang Yuanqi (1642-1715).

A special feature of the exhibition is the display of "Riverbank," which the museum considers to be a Tenth Century masterpiece by Dong Yuan, but which some scholars have suggested may be a modern fabrication by the renowned painter, connoisseur, and forger Zhang Daqian. In response to this suggestion, the museum has borrowed a landscape from the British Museum that was formerly attributed to Dong Yuan's follower, Juran (active circa 960-95) but which is now acknowledged to be a Zhang forgery. These two paintings are displayed side by side to enable the public to draw its own conclusions.

The Wang collection epitomizes the distinctly Chinese scholarly tradition of combining collecting with creativity. Mr Wang, an accomplished artist, acquired works of art as a way of learning from the past. To illustrate the important role that collecting has played as a source of inspiration and instruction in Mr Wang's work, the exhibition concludes with nine of his own paintings and calligraphies dating from 1937 to the present.

C.C. Wang (Wang Chi-Ch'ien or Wang Jiqian, born 1907) has collected paintings since he began practicing his art more than 70 years ago. For Mr Wang, collecting has always been a means to an end - a firsthand knowledge of the styles of earlier masters. A resident of New York since 1949, Mr Wang's collection has long been known to Western scholars and collectors, and today works from his collection are in many important public and university collections in America, including those in Cleveland, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, and Princeton. By far the largest concentration of paintings from the Wang Family collection - some 60 works - are now at the Metropolitan Museum.

The process whereby so many of Mr Wang's treasures came to the Metropolitan began in 1973 with the acquisition of 25 Song and Yuan masterpieces from Mr Wang as a first step toward expanding the museum's holdings of Asian art. At the time, the museum lacked a permanent space for the display of Chinese painting.

Twenty-five years later, in 1998, the Metropolitan Museum completed its goal of an entire wing devoted to Asian art, a veritable museum within the museum, incorporating the largest display space for Chinese painting and calligraphy outside Asia. This display space includes the renovated Douglas Dillon Galleries, first opened in 1981, as well as two new display spaces, the C.C. Wang Gallery and the Frances Young Tang Gallery, the latter named in honor of Oscar Tang's late wife, completed in 1997. With the recent promised gift of 12 paintings from the C.C. Wang Family Collection from museum trustee Oscar Tang and his family, the Metropolitan may now present the most comprehensive assemblage of Chinese painting and calligraphy in the West.

Among the rarest of the masterpieces in the Tang promised gift is "Riverbank," one of the largest and earliest monumental landscaped paintings known. Mr Wang has long regarded the painting as his most important possession. In 1973, when the Metropolitan Museum acquired a group of 25 Song and Yuan paintings from Mr Wang, he declined to include "Riverbank" in the group. At the time, Mr Wang's son, S.K. Wang, was still living in China and Mr Wang believed that he might have to relinquish "Riverbank" to the Chinese government in order to secure his son's emigration. Only after S.K. Wang and his family had moved to the United States did he consider parting with the scroll.

The impact of "Riverbank" on later painting styles is exemplified by a second masterpiece included in the Tang Family promised gift, "Simple Retreat" by Wang Meng (circa 1308-1385). Living through a period of political disintegration at the end of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), scholar-artists such as Wang Meng drew inspiration from the visions of the landscape created by Dong Yuan and other Tenth Century painters who lived during a similarly chaotic period following the collapse of the Tang dynasty (618-907). But in the late Fourteenth Century, the Tenth century ideal of landscape as a place for contemplative self-cultivation seemed unattainable.

Although Wang Meng's revival of imagery first created during the chaotic Five dynasties period served as a thinly veiled allusion to the political turmoil of his own time, the earlier embodiment of the eremitic ideal was undermined by Wang's non-realistic style and pictorial narrative was no longer taken at face value. While the scholar-recluse in "Riverbank" seems secure from the thunderstorm that swirls around him, the security of the master of "Simple Retreat" is contradicted by the tumultuous brushwork of his environment. The tempest that blows through "Simple Retreat" is no longer a rainstorm, but the inner tumult of the artist manifested through his expressive brushwork.

In addition to major examples of landscape art, the Tang Family promised gift features several important figure paintings, including the exceedingly rare "Palace Banquet" by an unknown academy painter of the late Tenth or Eleventh Century and a long monochrome narrative by Zhao Cangyun, a late Thirteenth Century survivor of the Mongol conquest. The genre of flower-and-bird painting is represented by "Mandarin Ducks and Hollyhocks," a pictorial metaphor of marital happiness by the leading early Ming dynasty academic master, Lu Ji (active late Fifteenth Century) and by "Two Eagles," a defiant symbol of political resistance by Zhu Da (Bada Shanren, 1626-1705), a descendant of the Ming royal house who lived through the occupation of China by the Manchus.

A catalogue, Along the Riverbank: Chinese Paintings from the C.C. Wang Family Collection, will be published by the Metropolitan Museum in conjunction with the exhibition. It will feature the 12 promised gifts from the Tang Family and will be organized in three sections: an essay by Wen Fong presenting an in-depth stylistic analysis of "Riverbank;" a narrative essay by Maxwell K. Hearn examining the 12 promised gifts; and an analysis of the physical and documentary evidence pertaining to "Riverbank." The publication will be available in a hardcover edition for $60 in the museum shops. It will be distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.

The full range of opinion about dating and authenticity of "Riverbank" will be presented on December 11, when the museum will host a full-day symposium devoted to issues of authenticity in Chinese Art. The symposium will include presentations by James Cahill, professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; Sherman Lee, retired director of the Cleveland Museum of Art; and Hironobu Kohara, professor emeritus, Nara University; each of whom will offer their reasons for doubting the authenticity of "Riverbank."

Papers in support of the early dating of "Riverbank" will be presented by Professor Shou-Chien Shih, director of the Graduate Institute of Art History at National Taiwan University, who will discuss the stylistic reasons for accepting a Tenth Century dating, and Maxwell K. Hearn, curator of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum and curator of "The Artist as Collector," who will present a comparative physical examination of "Riverbank" and the British Museum's forgery.

Three additional papers will examine other works of questioned attribution. A summary of connoisseurship methodologies by Wen Fong, consultative chairman and Douglass Dillon Curator of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy at the Metropolitan Museum, will conclude the proceedings.

"The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces from the C.C. Wang Family Collection" is organized by Maxwell K. Hearn. Exhibition design is by Daniel Kershaw, with graphics by Barbara Weiss, and lighting by Zack Zanolli.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is at 1000 Fifth Avenue. Hours are Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday 9:30 am to 5:15 pm, and Friday and Saturday 9:30 am to 9 pm. For more information, call 212/535-7710.