一加拿大人迈克尔·苏立文是外国人中最了解中国画的第一人,他去年9月去世,享年九十七岁,他从二十四岁开始接触中国画,几乎认识二十世纪中国绝大多数绘画大师。他所著的《中国艺术史》是牛津、耶鲁、普林斯顿等等世界名校沿用四十年的教材,西方人从这本书认识研究中国画,他去世前一个月还访问了上海美术馆,并且出版了自己的《二十世纪中国艺术与艺术家》,面对面对于中国画做了交代。他是唯一站在世界的高度观察、研究中国画的人,他对于中国画怎么说呢?他很谦虚地说: One Canadian, Michael Sullivan, is the foremost foreigner who knows Chinese painting most. He died in September last year at the age of 97. He started to touch Chinese paintings at the age of twenty-four and knew almost all the paintings of the 20th century in China Grandmaster. His “History of Chinese Art” is a teaching material that has been used by world famous universities such as Oxford, Yale and Princeton for 40 years. Westerners know Chinese paintings from this book and visited the Shanghai Art Museum a month prior to his death and published His “Twentieth Century Chinese Art and Artist” confronted with Chinese painting. He is the only person in the world who highly observes and studies Chinese painting. What does he say about Chinese painting? He said very modestly: