EXHIBITION EXPOUNDS ON 'VISION AND VERSE' IN CHINESE ART

Importance of poetry in painting displayed in 90 artworks at The Met in New York

"As there happened to be a volume of Du Fu's poetry on the table, I selected one suitable couplet for inscription on each of my landscapes," wrote Wang Jian, a much celebrated painter living in 17th-century China, on the final page of an album of pictures he painted for a longtime friend.

Wang also wrote that he had genuinely enjoyed the friendship since the days "when we were young and vigorous".

For Joseph Dolberg, an expert on ancient Chinese painting from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the painted album, with each page in the style of an old master who had come before Wang, is a priceless item of art.