New Songs on Ancient Tunes presents a sweeping selection of Chinese paintings and calligraphies from the turbulent century between 1850 and 1950. Drawn entirely from the private San Francisco collection of the Reverend Richard Fabian, the works span the years between the Opium War and the Cultural Revolution. The book includes a survey of the bold style of the late nineteenth-century Shanghai School, as contrasted with the conservative artists of the late Qing dynasty Orthodox School, and examines the impact on artists of the new urban (and international) culture of Shanghai, and interactions with Western and Japanese art. The book also explores the influence of Chinese archaeology on late Qing dynasty calligraphy and in turn, the influence of new styles of calligraphy on painting.

Focusing on superb works by the leading artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, New Songs on Ancient Tunes includes the painters Ren Bonian, Xugu, Zhao Zhiqian, Wu Changshi. Fu Baoshi, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, and Zhang Daqian, and the calligraphers Deng Shiru, Yi Bingshou, He Shaoji, and Wu Dacheng. The book includes essays by Jonathan Spence, Chu-tsung Li, Stephen Little, and Qianshen Bai, and catalogue entries by Little, Rachel Farkas, Janet Carpenter, and Bruce McCLaren.