We're here in the Shanghai
Museum looking at some beautiful
18th-century ink paintings
of garden scenes, of flower
blossoms.
Here we have plum blossoms, some
with bamboo, some with rockery
garden subjects that were
popular in 18th-century Yangzhou.
I feel keenly aware of the
monochrome aspect of these, that
they're just black ink on the
paper and yet so evocative
of the season, of late winter,
of early spring, of the promise
of spring.
This is a scholarly subject that
we have seen again and again. A
subject that calligraphers,
poets embraced also because of
the technicalities of the
brushwork that they could pair
the various styles of
calligraphy along with their
evocative sentiments in the
quatrains.
We have the black ink on paper,
the emphasis on the personal
signature in the brushstroke,
the combination of calligraphy
with painting. All of those
coming together here in the 18th
century but drawing on a very
rich and long tradition.
In 18th-century Yangzhou, they
were really looking to the past,
studying script styles of
calligraphy which were inscribed
on other earlier vessels. We see
a contrast not just in taking
different forms of calligraphy
for each album leaf, some in
seal script, some in standard
script, but also contrast in the
brushwork.
Here to do the rock face we have
a gray wash of the ink with
leaves that are delicately
painted with dark ink. In other
areas, we see loose brushwork
to indicate the outline of a
rock, and the brush feels dry in
other areas where the artist is
giving a sense of the buds of
the flowers with touches of very
dark ink.
Inset against a void, framing
this white background. It's a
place to think about the
relationship between the
inscription and the object.
We're talking about literary
circles of elite people.
This is important because
socially speaking, this was a
new phenomenon in Yangzhou. This
idea that the elite were
rebuilding the city after the
massacre that had happened early
in the Qing dynasty, the people
who were investing in these
garden estates and patronizing
these poets. This particular
one here, Wang Shishen, who had
come from Anhui province to
paint in the city. They were
coming to participate in
literary networks. The elite
were actually the merchants.
They were people who had been
active oftentimes in the salt
administration, which was based
there in Yangzhou in 18th
century. This is drawing on this hundreds-
of-year-old tradition going back
to the Song dynasty, going back
to the Yuan dynasty of literati.
The scholar-artist-poet who
expresses his subjective
feelings through his brushwork,
through his paintings, through
his poetry. Here, hundreds
of years later in a self-
conscious way, developing that
persona as a way to market
oneself as an artist and a poet.
This was so interesting because
in the Yuan dynasty, these
artists didn't think of
themselves as professionals.
Here, Wang Shishen and many
others who were active in 18th-
century Yangzhou were
professionals. They traveled up
and down the Grand Canal
peddling their poetry or their
painting, or sometimes both.
This is in stark contrast to
that literati scholar-poet
idea of the amateur who paints
for himself. Here we have
someone who is drawing on that
persona but making a living as
an artist.
That's what makes the Yangzhou
phenomenon so interesting that
these artists moved up and down
the Grand Canal to Hangzhou and
all the way up to Beijing. They
maybe had artist friends that
they were in touch with and
visited over time. Their
networks were far beyond this
one city. I find the 18th-
century Yangzhou artists, in
particular, fascinating simply
because there were so many of
them active and bringing so many
new styles and ideas into the
city. They're on the cusp of
this new model that then takes
off in 19th-century Shanghai.
This connection to garden
culture is revisited in a new
way at this time.