Page 26 - Dreweatts May 19, 2015 Chinese and Asian Works of Art, Good section on late Chinese Bronzes

SCHOLAR ’ S R OCKS

Natural rocks were highly regarded by the scholarly elites of Imperial China for their auspicious reference to nature
and to mountains, in particular.

In their overall shape, and formation of cavities, many natural rocks in China were regarded as reminiscent of
mountains, whose naturally high peaks and ability to produce water, the life giving element, from the clouds
swirling around them, were seen as providing the closest connection with heaven. Much in the same way as
all other aspects of nature, mountains were conceived in terms of expressing the will of heaven towards men.
Elaborate decorative programs, therefore, were created by the Chinese through the use of natural images that
were seen in relation to auspicious occurrences and thus thought of perpetuating their benign effects on Earth.

Jessica Rawson examines how, if provided with the correct features, images in China were thought of functioning
as analogues to their real natural counterpart, in other words, becoming alive within a specific decorative program
and could therefore be examined in connection with expressing the preoccupations of the people who created
them.

At any given time, therefore, images provided a useful source illumining contemporary social values on China.
In the burial context, for example, burial chambers and incense burners, shaped as miniature mountains, were
incorporated into an elaborate decorative program that was interpreted as presenting the deceased with the im-
mortal realm they were expected to reach by their living offspring. Following the collapse of the Han, a period of
political turmoil and disunion, coinciding with the period of the Six Dynasties (AD 420-589), took place, images of
literary hermits portrayed within mountainous settings, such as the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, thought
of being formed in the 3rd century AD, begun to surface in literature but also in tombs and paintings. In addition,
the scholarly genre of landscape painting, depicting scholars at work within mountains became established by
the Song dynasty (AD 960-1279).

Alf Stein observes these features in connection with paralleling a growing interest of the scholars with discon-
necting from the contemporary current affairs and finding solace within nature. By the Tang dynasty, a set of four
principal aesthetic qualities for the rocks had emerged, consisting of thinness, openness, perforations, and wrin-
kling and the Song produced the first manual on stone connoisseurship, Du Wan’s Stone Compendium of Cloudy
Forest, which had a great impact on the history of collecting stones.

From the Ming dynasty, manuals providing instructions on how to build garden containers, as the Hua Jing and
the Yun Lin Shipu, coincidently surfaced mentioning the rules and values of the life of the learned men and
describing rocks as the necessary constituents of the environments where the learned men could retire from
the world and pursue his passions. Gardens presenting the miniaturised features of nature, and scholarly items
shaped as mountains and manufactured from natural materials as wood, bamboo, or unusual natural stones, such
as the one featured in this lot, had become, by the late Imperial China, a standard feature decorating the studios
of scholars, thus opening a window in relation to their contemporary cultural values.

For reference see Rawson, Jessica (2000), ‘Cosmological systems as sources of art, ornament and design,’ Bulletin
of the Museum of Far Eastern antiquities, 72, 133-89, Jessica (2002), ‘The power of images: the model universe of
the First Emperor and its legacy,’ Historical Research, 75 (188), 123-54 and Alf Stein (1990), The world in miniature :
container gardens and dwellings in Far Eastern religious thought, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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