Page 468 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

315-316

Shen Zhou
1427-1509

LANDSCAPES WITH FIGURES

Wen Zhengming
1470-1559
RAINY AND WINDY LANDSCAPE

c. 1490
Chinese
six album leaves mounted as a handscroll;
ink on paper; ink and light color on paper
38.7 X 60.2 fl5 /4 X 23 /4J
2
3
signatures, seals, and inscriptions by the artists:
leaf i, signature and two seals; leaf 2, signature,
two seals, and poem; leaf 3, signature, seal, and
poem; leaf 4, signature, seal, and poem; leaf 5,
signature, two seals, and poem; leaf 6 (by Wen
Zhengming), two seals and poem. Thirty-five
additional seals of collectors and two colophons,
one by Wen Zhengming dated to 1516, and one by
Xie Lansheng (1760-1831) dated to 1824.
references: Edwards 1962, 38-41, 95-96; Sullivan
1974, 48-51; Ann Arbor 1976, 28-34; Cleveland
1980,185-187
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City,
Nelson Fund
This deservedly famous and much praised set of
album leaves reveals the art of Shen Zhou in his
old age, and at its highest level. Richard Edwards
has dated the scroll to about 1480, which seems to
this author a decade too early. The masterful ink
handling, differing for different subjects but sure,
strong, and predominantly wet, seems more com-
patible with the early 14905, comparable with the
1494 album of Plants, Animals, and Insects (cat.
314). This dating accords well with Wen Zheng-
ming's statement, in his colophon of 1516, that the
"venerable" Wu Kuan (1436-1504) asked him to
paint four leaves following the six by Shen Zhou.
(Four of the album leaves have been lost, three by
Wen and one by Shen.) At sixty, Wu would have
qualified as venerable, but hardly at forty-five.
Leaf i, the genre scene with gardeners, is the
only leaf without poem or inscription, and most
likely the omission was deliberate: workingmen
were not an approved wen ren subject (in contrast
to the subjects of the other four leaves), hence
unworthy of poetry. Nevertheless this composi-
tion is the most innovative of the set, matched in
quality only by leaves 2 and 3. Some elements in
leaf i are "conventional" in the sense of having
precedents —the right foreground with its catal-
pas (?) and bare willows recalls the "one-corner"
compositions of the thirteenth-century Ma-Xia
school and its early Ming descendant, the Zhe
school, and the rock platform under the bamboo
(?) fence had appeared in paintings for centuries.
But observation and inventiveness are manifest
in the way in which the fence is angled to divide

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