The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, Woodblock print, ink and colour on paper, Qing dynasty, 18th Century.

Private Collection, Sweden.

In 1679, the playwright, author, and garden designer Li Yu published a primer for amateur painters called the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. The manual’s images and texts impart a sense of famous masters’ styles and how to reproduce them. The designs for the prints were prepared by Wang Gai, as he had the versatility required to paint in a range of manners. The manual was extremely successful and became the most widely used book of its type not only in China, but in Japan and Korea as well. Today, many painters still use it as a starting point. Very rare in early Chinese editions.

The book is represented in various Museums and Librarys usually in later editions, to mention some; The Metropolitan Museum, inventory no CP8.
The British Museum. Inventory no 1982,1011,0.1.