Page 454 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

302 soft, the mists in the upland valleys sensitively founded, yielding composite (and fictitious) bio-
depicted, and the whole is a complex blend of nar- graphies. The most easily distinguished of these
Qiu Ying rative realism, decorative color, and homage to men is the official and calligrapher whose work is
died 1552 both historical and artistic antiquity. The painting recorded in the collection catalogue Tingfanlou
EMPEROR GUANG Wu OF THE EASTERN reveals a professional mastery equaling that of Shuhua Ji (preface 1843). That work is a hand-
Qiu's Suzhou colleagues, Zhou Chen (cat. 295)
scroll dated to the year
and hence could not
1600,
HAN DYNASTY AND His ENTOURAGE and Tang Yin (cat. 297, 298). have been by either of the other artists named
FORDING A RIVER The manifest excellence and importance of the Sun Long, both of whom were active during the
picture are confirmed by two seals (at upper left) fifteenth century. Probably the earliest of them all
Chinese
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk of the greatest of all Chinese collectors, Liang was the Sun Long whose byname (zf) was Zongji;
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170.8 x 65.4 (6y /4 x 25 /5J Qingbiao (1620-1691). S.E.L. a colophon composed by him at the age of
signed by the artist; seal (at lower right): Shi Fu seventy-two is recorded in the collection cata-
logue Shiqu Baoji Xubian (preface 1793) as having
The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
been written for a painting by the artist Zhao Qi
(1238-1306). This Sun Long, from Rui'an in Zhe-
The four centuries of Han dynasty rule were 303 jiang Province, was active from the Yongle era
broken at about midpoint by a fourteen-year Sun Long (1403-1424) onward and served as prefect in
usurpation (A.D. 9-23). After a bloody civil war c. 1410-c. 1480 Anhui Province during the Tianshun era (1457-
Liu Xiu (6 B.C.-A.D. 57), a prince of the Han 1464). Sun's specialty in painting eventually
dynasty, regained the throne. As Emperor Guang BAMBOO, BLOSSOMING PLUM, earned him the name "Plum-Blossom Sun," and
Wu (Brilliant Martial Emperor, r. A.D. 25-57), ne AND BIRDS IN SNOW his paintings were valued equally with the much-
moved the capital from Chang'an (present-day prized bamboo paintings of his contemporary Xia
Xi'an) eastward to Luoyang, center of his own second half of i$th century Chang (1388-1470). Sun's daughter, who followed
Chinese
power base. Retrospectively, therefore, the two hanging scroll; ink and color on silk him in painting, eventually married another
periods of Han rule have been called Former and 116.6 x 61.8 (45 /s x 24 /sj Rui'an artist-official, the calligrapher Ren Daoxun
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Later or Western and Eastern Han. Guang Wu (1422-1503), who also continued Sun Long's style
proved an able ruler, and was particularly noted Palace Museum, Beijing of painting.
by later historians for his fostering of agriculture, The Sun Long who painted the present
a policy exactly consonant with ancient Chinese Four sparrows huddle on the snow-laden branch Bamboo, Blossoming Plum, and Birds in Snow
traditions of good and wise rule. of a blossoming plum tree; another of the small
Presumably the painting was commissioned, its birds hovers in the still air above, while a white
subject assigned to the artist rather than indepen- pigeon stands motionless beneath the tree on the
dently conceived. In any case, the subject was frozen ground. Especially noteworthy is the tech-
both historical and laudatory, and therefore its nique by which the densely muffling snow is
manner of depiction was governed by some manifested, for the snow-covered areas are not
ancient pictorial conventions. Although the inci- painted at all but rather blank silk around which a
dent depicted dates from the first century A.D., defining background has been painted. Since
the conventions available to a professional artist these "blanks" in fact represent the most substan-
such as Qiu Ying were basically those of the late tial matter of the painting — the pigeon, the snow-
Six Dynasties period and the Sui and Tang dynas- covered rocks and branches, and the distant
ties (spanning approximately the 4th to the end of peak—there is a figure-ground reversal that
the 9th century). Qiu Ying's painting reflects the engenders a visual tension in the otherwise quiet
landscapes of that period, with their characteristic scene.
preferred palette of blue, green, and gold and their The absence of firmly drawn, discrete contours
tall, narrow mountain peaks. To artists and critics is referred to by Chinese writers as mo gu, "line-
of the tenth and eleventh centuries this style was suppressed" or "boneless" painting. Although the
already archaic, and they described those moun- technique appears already in Tang dynasty (618-
tains, graphically, as resembling the teeth of a 907) paintings, traditional criticism associates it
court lady's comb. The costumes of the emperor especially with the tenth-eleventh-century Song
(on a white horse) and his principal attendant (on painters Xu Chongsi and Zhao Chang. During the
a buckskin) resemble summer traveling dress of thirteenth century the Buddhist priest Luochuang
the Tang dynasty (618-907), and the saddle blan- used a similar method for Bamboo and White
kets on the horses also approximate those of Tang. Hen, and in the fourteenth century the literati
The superlative talents of Qiu Ying, however, master Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) painted an
could not be totally concealed behind such pious entire landscape, Nine Peaks After Snowfall, in
archaisms. The sure construction of the space reserve. The present artist thus did not originate
embracing the foreground clearly indicates the his evocative technique, but he did use it in pur-
emperor's intended path: across the river to the suit of pictorial, i.e., descriptive or narrative,
earth-covered wooden road on the far right, then goals, that were unusual in his day and closer in
along that road as it passes below a waterfall and spirit to those of the early Song masters.
veers left, then upward and to the right again, At least three artists named Sun Long were
through a pine forest to the distant palace. The active during the Ming dynasty, but details of
mineral colors (azurite, malachite, cinnabar) are their varying lives and careers are sometimes con-

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