For well over a thousand years Chinese and Japanese women made, commissioned, collected, and used paintings, yet until very recently this was scarcely acknowledged in the study of East Asian art history. This ground-breaking anthology reveals the depth and diversity of women’s influence on East Asian art and adds new dimensions to our understanding of East Asian art history. Notable women in the history of East Asian art are introduced. Written by leading scholars, the essays display a variety of interdisciplinary concerns and deal extensively with social history and literature. Collectively they modify lingering stereotypes of premodern Asian women as receivers rather than shapers of culture and provide glimpses of the ways in which investigations of women and women’s perspectives might expand the discourse within the field.

Marsha Smith Weidner specializes in the history of Chinese painting, Chinese Buddhist art, and Tibeto-Chinese painting. She holds a Ph.D. degree in History of Art, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. She was professor of the University of Kansas, now retired. “Views from Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists, 1300–1912” in Indianapolis Museum of Art, the first exhibition ever devoted to the painting of Chinese women artists, was curated by her in 1988.