Page 440 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

Works like Ma's hanging scroll of Spring in the
Cleveland Museum of Art were available at court
to be studied. To the smaller scale and decorous
elegance of the Ningbo tradition of flower-and-
bird painting, Ming court painters added elements
from this currently approved Southern Song
court style. They could hardly have known that
their manner would soon —and for centuries to
come—be roundly denigrated in China by the
practitioners and theorists of the ascendant literati
(wen ren) mode.
Japan, however, offered fertile soil for their
achievements. From the port city of Ningbo,
which had long been also a center of commercial
decorative painting, flower-and-bird paintings
were shipped in quantity to Japan, where they are
still to be found in large numbers. Their conser-
vative, decorative style, realistic in detail, obvi-
ously recommended itself to Japanese buyers.
Likewise, the style of the Southern Song academy
became a major force in Japanese art. This scroll
and others anticipate the decorative revolution of
the Kano school in Japan (cat. 236), which began
only about two decades later. s.E. L.

293

Dujin
active c. 1465-^. 1500
ENJOYING ANTIQUITIES
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
5
5
126.1 x 187 (49 /s x 73 /sj
National Palace Museum, Taipei

Two scholars examine a variety of ancient bronze
and ceramic vessels while a servant approaches
with a chess board in the lower left; two women
attendants unwrap a musical instrument on a
292 marble-topped table which bears several scrolls
epitomizes the respect due the emperor from his
Yin Hong subjects, suggests that Yin was working at or near and albums. The four canonical scholarly plea-
sures of lute, chess, calligraphy, and painting thus
active c. 1500 the imperial court. The Kimbell painting, less await their turn to enrich the lives of the gentle-
traditional, anticipates fruitful future develop-
FLOWERS AND BIRDS OF EARLY SPRING ments by later artists, especially in Japan, in the men, who inhabit a realm separated from the
"fur and feathers" genre. outer world both physically and symbolically by
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk works of art. The inscription makes great claims
168.7 x IO2 -7 (66 /s x 4O /s) A bolder sense of design than was traditional in for art— the verse asserting the moralizing effect
3
3
signature and one seal of the artist "fur and feathers" paintings is more than mani- of connoisseurship, the prose claiming a transcen-
fest in this work. Though Early Spring employs
The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth standard motifs — pheasants and other exotic dental theme for the painting itself:
birds, rocks and torrents, snow-covered cliffs and Enjoying antiquities is of course common
Yin Hong is known by only two works, both in overhanging tree limbs — these are shown close up and their scope is great;
American collections —the present scroll and and dramatically organized for a daring, large- In paying homage to images and determining
The Hundred Birds Admiring the Peacock in the scale, highly kinetic decorative effect. The sources their names lie propriety and pleasure.
Cleveland Museum of Art. Nearly contempora- for this seem evident; as part of their effort to If a man's days lack propriety and pleasure
neous records indicate that his specialty was "fur restore bygone glories, Ming emperors patronized then to the contrary he will be ashamed;
and feathers" and that he rivaled his famous con- the styles of the Song emperor Hui Zong (r. 1101- Doing this will rectify one,
temporary, Lii Ji, in his depiction of bird, flower, 1126) and of such Southern Song court painters and that is what I wait for.
and animal subjects. The Hundred Birds, which as Ma Yuan (act. before ii9o-c. 1230) [signed] Du Jin, called Chengju. Jianmian

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