Monsieur Loo : Le roman d’un marchand d’art asiatique

CT Loo keeps popping up into my life. Years ago wandering Paris I discovered his incredible old gallery – now the CT Loo Gallery near the Parc Monseau (see post here) – then various objets that interested traced back to Loo’s collections. More recently I was exploring the connections the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi made while in Peking in 1930 and found that the Loo family were among his friends while he was residing in the city (this piece of research will be out soon hopefully in the new Royal Asiatic Society China’s next Journal when it’s published). And most recently David Piling wrote a long piece on Loo for the Weekend FT (link and some additional information here). Now I note that French speaking Shanghai blogger Hugues Martin has written about Loo too and the French language biography of the man from Geraldine Lenain – Monsieur Loo – Le Roman d’un Marchand d’art Asiatique. But it’s only in French so any English language publishers reading this post – chase the rights and get it translated pronto please. Loo is a fascinating personage to people with my interests but also a very controversial one in the Chinese art, collecting and heritage world…a fuller understanding of the man and his milieu would be much appreciated and a great read….

CT Loo’s 1926 “Pagoda”, now the CT Loo Gallery on rue de Coucelles, Paris