Page 226 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

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247 TiiChin(lj88-U52). Fithtrmtn.
Detail of a hindMroU. ink md colour on the Southern Sung academy still lingered on in the fifteenth ccn-
pipcr. Mmg Dynasty.
tury. After his dismissal and return to Hangchow, his influence in
the area became so wide as to give the name of his province to a
very loosely connected group of professional landscape painters.
The Che School, as it was called, embodied the forms and conven-
tions of the Ma-Hsia tradition but treated them with a quite una-
cademic looseness and freedom, as is shown for instance in the de-
tail from Tai Chin's handscroll, Fishermen, in the Freer Gallery.
Other outstanding artists of the Che School were Wu Wei and
Chang Lu, both of whom specialised in figures in a landscape set-
ting. At the very end of the dynasty, the Che School enjoyed a
brief final flowering in the elegant and eclectic art of Lan Ying
(1578-1660).
PAINTING OF During the prosperous middle years of the Ming Dynasty, the Wu
THE LITERATI: district was the artistic capital of China and Shcn Chou (1427-
THE WU SCHOOL j 509) its greatest ornament, and so regarded as the founder of the
Wu School, although he was only the chief of a long line of land-
scape painters in Wu that we could trace back to the T'ang Dy-
nasty. Shen Chou never took office, living in comfortable retire-
ment, a benevolent landlord and member of a circle of scholars
and collectors. Under his scholarly teacher Liu Chueh, he early
mastered a wide range of styles from those of the Southern Sung
academicians to those of the Yuan recluses. His well-known land-
scapes in the manner of Ni Tsan are extremely revealing of the
change that was coming over the literary man's art during the
Ming Dynasty; for while Ni Tsan is almost forbiddingly plain and
austere, Shen Chou is something of an extrovert who cannot help
infusing a human warmth into his paintings. As he said of him-
self, "Ni Tsan is simple; 1 am complex," and whenever he painted
in the manner of that difficult master his teacher would shout at
him "Overdone! Overdone!"
For Shen Chou was no mere copyist. He distilled a style that is
uniquely his own. Whether in long panoramic landscapes, tall
mountain scrolls, or small album paintings, his brushwork, seem-
ingly so casual, is in fact firm and confident, his detail crystal-clear
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