US authority on Chinese art James Cahill dies at the age of 87

James Cahill, an art historian who played a key role in expanding the study and teaching of Chinese painting in the West before and after the opening up of US-China relations in the early 1970s, has died at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 87.

The cause of death on February 14 was complications of prostate cancer, his daughter, Sarah Cahill, said.

A long-time professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Cahill was a dominant scholar in his field for 50 years. In the late 1950s, he was one of a small number of Western scholars permitted access to the imperial paintings that had been evacuated to Taiwan before the mainland fell under communist rule.

He was allowed to photograph many of the works for Chinese Painting, his 1960 text that for decades was required reading in Chinese art history classes.

He helped organise an exhibition of Chinese imperial art from Taiwan's National Palace Museum that opened in 1961 at the National Gallery in Washington. Called "Chinese Art Treasures", the show travelled to other US cities, drawing large crowds to view works unseen by the West since the 1930s.

He also directed a project to produce high-quality colour photographs of thousands of paintings from the National Palace Museum. These became an invaluable resource for other scholars and museums.