Page 258 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

l«o WuLi(l6ji-l7l8), WhiirClvuJi
and Oreen Mountains. Detail of a
hands troll. Ink and colour on silk.
Ch'ing Dynasty.
thereafter devoting the rest of his life to missionary work in
Kiangsu. However, his conversion in no way changed his style of
painting. A pupil of Wang Chien and an intimate friend of Wang
Hui, he called himself Mo-ching Tao-jen, the Taoist of the Ink-
well (in the literal sense of Alices treacle-well), continuing, after
an unproductive period following his conversion, to paint in the
eclectic manner of the early Ch'ing wen-jen, without a hint of Eu-
ropean influence, until his death in 1718.
By the eighteenth century the settled state of China had created
a great demand for works of art, notably in such prosperous cities
as Yangchow, at thejuncture of the Grand Canal with the Yangtse
River. Here, to bear witness to their newly acquired gentry status,
salt merchants and other rich traders built up libraries and art col-
lections, entertained scholars, poets, and painters, and expected to
be entertained in return. Among the many artists who competed
for their patronage the most talented was a group that came later
to be known as the Eight Eccentrics of Yangchow, whose idiosyn-
crasies of behaviour or technique were, in some cases at least,
partly assumed for professional reasons. The hallmark of Chin
Nung's art, for instance, was not so much his deft ink paintings of
birds, flowers, or bamboo as his heavy square calligraphy, derived
from Han stone inscriptions, which offers a teasing contrast to the
light touch of the brushwork in his Plum Blossoms, illustrated here;
his contemporary, Huang Shen (1687-c. 1768), playfully dis-
torted the figure style of Ch'cn Hung-shou, which was itself al-
ready a playful distortion of ancient models; while the art of the
immensely prolific Hua Yen (1682-c. 1755) is often an airy com-
mentary on the styles of the great masters of Sung bird and flower
painting. In all the works illustrated there is an appeal to the an-
tique, but the attitude of these painters is much less serious than
that of their late Ming and early Ch'ing predecessors, and they
carry the burden of tradition more lightly. Their purpose, after
ayo Chin Nung (1687-1764). Plum all, was to please.
Bhuomi. Hanging irroll dated Groupings such as the Four Wangs and the Eight Eccentrics of
equivalent to 1761 Ink on paper. Ch*n)g
.
DynaMy. Yangchow have little foundation in fact. Where, for instance, does
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rial