Han Van Veereken

The publication in 1951 of Robert Hans van Gulik’s Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period created a stir in the Chinese art community. It was privately published in only fifty copies, which were sent as gifts to selected libraries and museums worldwide. (A list of those outside the Far East is Appendix II to the same author’s Sexual Life in Ancient China.) The copies were accompanied by a letter advising that in order to keep away “sensation-seekers and peeping Toms,” the books were to be made accessible only to “a limited number of serious scholars in the field, for purposes of research.”