Michael Sullivan

Donovan Michael Sullivan (; 29 October 1916 – 28 September 2013) was a Canadian-born British art historian and collector, and one of the major Western pioneers in the field of modern Chinese art history and criticism.

Sullivan was born in Toronto, Ontario, and moved to England at the age of three. He was the youngest of five children of Alan Sullivan (pen name Sinclair Murray), a Canadian mining engineer turned novelist and his wife Elisabeth (née Hees). He lived in Oxford, England. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford for 1973–74.

Sullivan was a major art collector who owned more than 400 works of art, including paintings by Chinese masters Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, and Wu Guanzhong. His was one of the world's most significant collections of modern Chinese art. He bequeathed his collection to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which has a gallery dedicated to Sullivan and his wife Khoan.

Selected publications

Symbols of Eternity, Oxford University Press, 1979, University of California Press, 1984, (revised edn of A Short History of Chinese Art, 1967)

Reviews "Review: A Great Leap Forward for Modern Chinese Art History? Recent Publications in China and the United States-A Review Article", Ralph C. Croizier, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Aug., 1998), pp. 786–793