Page 457 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

depicted flower or bamboo subjects; almost all signature, seals, or any other clue to attribution sinews of the demons are most characteristic of
were in wen ren taste and not of the highest (cat. 307), and this one, bearing a seal (Yin Shi such icons. Although the landscape is basically
quality. Wang Zhen evidently acquired some of Cong Shan) which suggests that the name of the Southern Song (1127-1279) in type, derived from
these scrolls from a certain Zheng Jingrong who, painter was Yin Shan, about whom nothing is Li Tang and the Ma-Xia adaptations of Li's type
according to inscriptions on some of the paintings, currently known. Zhong Kui was a popular sub- forms, it employs these conventions as modified
traveled south from Beijing in 1.446. Presumably ject, and particularly meaningful for the scholar- by the Ningbo painters. In its decorative treat-
Wang Zhen acquired the works bearing Zheng's official class (cat. 288), but this work has been ment the stream at the beginning of the scroll is
seals and inscriptions at that time or soon executed in a mannered variation of the brush- comparable with the stream in the Kimbell
thereafter. work used by professional Buddhist painters of Museum scroll by Yin Hong (cat. 292), a leading
The two paintings in this exhibition from the Ningbo to render Hell scenes. The profusion of fifteenth-century court painter of decorative bird,
Wang tomb are conservative works — one without nail-head strokes delineating the muscles and flower, and "seasonal" paintings. S.E.L.

detail
456 CIRCA 1492