Page 453 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

summons to serve, preferring a life of fishing
and farming. Next, the Studio for Planting
Bamboo [Zhongzhu Zhai] was inspired by
Wang [Huizhi, d. A.D. 388], son of the famous
calligrapher Wang [Xizhi, 303 7-361 ?]. Wang
[Huizhi] retired from the world and sur-
rounded himself with bamboo The fifth
poem, Plot for Picking Herbs [Caiyao Pu] dis-
cusses Han [Kang]. For thirty years this East-
ern Han figure sold herbs in the [Changan]
marketplace, charging the same honest
price he fled to the mountains for fear that
his virtuous reputation would bring him
trouble. [Sima Guang] alludes to the bibulous
[Tang] poet [Bo Juyi, 772-846] in his sixth
poem, the Pavilion for Watering Flowers [Jiao-
hua ting]. Demoted to the position of magis-
trate of [Jiangzhou], [Bo Juyi] built a garden
retreat at [Xiangshan] to grow flowers, make
wine and poetize in the company of eight good
friends Terrace for Seeing the Mountains
[Jianshan Tai], the final poem, was inspired by
a famous line, "I pluck chrysanthemums at the
eastern hedge; easily the Southern Mountain
comes into view/ written by the [Jin] recluse
[Tao Yuanming, 365-427], who gave up the
imperial bureaucracy to nurture his soul in the
mountains. Thus, as [Sima Guang] walked
about his garden in retirement, each place he
would stop to rest provided him with an exam-
ple of Confucian virtue facing predicaments
similar to his own.

... Qiu Ying followed [Sima Guang's] essay
... even though he [reversed] the order in the
garden by placing the Pavilion for Playing with
Water before the Reading Hall. Otherwise, he
constructs each scene with remarkable fidelity
to the literary description [for an English trans-
lation, see Siren 1949, pp. 77-78]
Written among [Xiang Yuanbian's] seals at the
beginning of the painting in the lower right-
hand corner is the character shu, part of a code
of characters which frequently appear on paint-
ings he owned. The meaning of the code
remains unknown because no catalogue of
[Xiang's] collection was published. However,
since [Xiang Yuanbian's] cataloguing of his own
collection was based on the system of the [Qian
Zi Wen, Thousand-Character Classic], in which
the character shu is numbered 681, the present
painting should have entered [Xiang's] collec-
tion prior to the year 1547. S.E.L.

452 CIRCA 1492