Page 46 - Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasty by Johnathan Hay

hard to know whether Yangzhou was copying the summer palaces of the court, or vice versa;

more likely, the two developments fed off each other.
The large decorative paintings for which Yangzhou became known in this period
point to a highly sophisticated public, far removed from the traditional caricature of salt
merchants as vulgar nouveaux-riches. The pictorial representations of prosperity tended to be
indirect: for example, the bird and animal compositions of the versatile painter Hua Yan

(1682-1756). With subtle brushwork and inventive compositions, he created a world of
constant movement and energy which surely struck a responsive chord in the dynamic
commercial world of Yangzhou (556). Like many of his contemporaries, Hua saturated his

paintings with light, an innovation so general in this period that one must wonder if it is not
linked to the increased presence of European paintings and engravings after 1700. Certainly,
Yangzhou painters would have been aware of developments at court. Hua Yan sought his
fortune in Beijing as a young man, and the local painter Li Shan (1686-1756 or later) served
in the Imperial Study as secretary and painter during the final years of the Kangxi reign. In

the Yongzheng period he returned to Yangzhou where he joined the circle of the then salt
commissioner, Lü Jianzeng, and turned to calligraphy and painting to earn a living. In the
early Qianlong reign he served for a few years as a provincial official, before establishing

himself definitively as a professional painter in Yangzhou in the early 1740s. Li took a
common style of decorative painting on silk, which combined freely painted ink rocks and
trees with brightly colored flowers and birds, and completely changed its character. In place
of rich and expensive silk he used paper, and employed deliberately rough brushwork to set
off the almost gaudy color, giving the motifs, what is more, almost caricatural form (558).

The result was as shocking as the original style had been innocuous. It demanded of the
viewer an ability to recognize the style that had been rejected, and a willingness to accept a
concept of prosperity rather than a literal representation: it implied, in other words, a degree

of detachment from the materialism of Yangzhou life. The inscriptions to certain works,
moreover, suggest a conscious parody of the immaculate visions of court painting. Hua Yan,
too, was not averse to satire: many of his works depict a merciless struggle for survival
within a gorgeous garden world.
Hua Yan and Li Shan belonged to a larger group of painters active in Yangzhou at

mid-century whose works associated commercial appeal and disabused commentary, and
who were later dubbed the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou. Their presence in the city was one
result of the economic hardship faced by intellectuals in this period; others are vividly

described in Wu Jingzi's satirical Unofficial History of the Scholars, written ca. 1740-50 but
not published until 1768. Their numbers had increased rapidly in line with the rest of the
population, while opportunities to serve in administration remained hard to find and hard to